


Lemonade

by HillaryEvergreen



Category: Billary - Fandom, Political RPF, Political RPF - US 20th c.
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-14 04:48:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 37,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9162709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HillaryEvergreen/pseuds/HillaryEvergreen
Summary: "I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up. I was served lemons, but I made lemonade."





	1. Intuition

_I tried to make a home out of you, but doors lead to trap doors, a stairway leads to nothing. Unknown women wander the hallways at night._ _Where do you go when you go quiet?_ _You come home at 3AM and lie to me. What are you hiding?_  

_The past and the future merge to meet us here. What luck. What a fucking curse._

 

* * *

 

  _January 21st, 1998_

 

She's not a fool.

When Bill woke her this morning, the look in his eye took her right back to 1987.

"Hillary."

She felt his weight settle on the edge of the bed, felt his hand on her shoulder. "Hill, honey," he squeezed her shoulder gently. "I need to talk to you."

"Hmm..?" she mumbled, pulled out of a deep sleep.

She turned her face towards his voice and opened her eyes, blinking away the sleep and the dreams. ( _What does a woman in your position dream about - the president’s wife?_ She had been asked. Chelsea running on soft green Arkansas lawns in bare feet and cotton dresses; humid Southern summers and lemonade in frosty, dripping glasses; her husband's broad shoulders, his strong arms around her; heads thrown back in laughter, white crescents of teeth exposed; sex. “Oh, the usual things,” she’d answered cordially, retreating behind her walls. Some things were private. As many as possible, which was little enough.)

Without her contact lenses, everything was a blur - she furrowed her brows, squinting, trying to register Bill’s face in the dim light of the bedroom. Their bedroom.

"Hmm, what is it? What's wrong?" Her tongue felt heavy, her voice husky. She could usually fall asleep and wake on a dime, but last night she hadn't gone to bed until past two in the morning, had been preparing for a speech at Goucher College in the coming afternoon. She had cloistered herself in an office with a few aides and her speechwriter, rehearsing and rewriting until the words flowed just right. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. She’d stay up all night if she needed to, to make things perfect.

Darkness filtered through the gaps in the curtains. She reached over to the bedside table, pawing for her glasses. Bill beat her to it, opened them with slender fingers, and helped to gently guide them over her ears and settle them on the bridge of her nose. She blinked again, adjusting to her newfound sight. The clock next to the bed read 4:30AM.

"There's something in today's papers that you should know about," he said, watching her face, registering her expressions - the pink creases on her cheek and temple where her face had been resting on the pillow, her dark eyebrows knitted with concern, lips pressed together. He leaned over her, steeling himself. She looked back - could smell his skin, saw that his clothes looked rumpled, his cheeks rough with stubble. He hadn’t showered yet this morning. They were always studying each other. Sometimes it felt like he saw right through her. Sometimes, like he couldn’t see her at all.

"What are you talking about?" she asked, propping herself up on her elbows. She caught his roaming eyes with her own, hit him with the full force of her gaze. “What happened?”

She was awake now. She could flip it like a switch when she needed to, when she smelled danger.

The words fell out of him, halting at first, but slowly warming up, seductive as a snake charmer spinning his narrative for her. An intern, Ken Starr, rumours and allegations. He didn’t do it, the things they were going to accuse him of in the paper - just more lies from the right wing operatives trying to hamstring his presidency, accusing him of another improper sexual relationship. _In_ the White House. _Cheater. Cheater cheater cheater._ But he was innocent this time.

It’s not that she didn’t believe him. Not exactly. But when you are married to a man who has had his hands on other women, whose palms have pressed into their flesh and hair, whose fingertips have brushed their lips, those other women, dozens or more… something breaks. Something becomes stained inside of you, a reminder, nagging and biting.

It’s not that she didn’t believe him. It’s not that she didn’t want ( _need_ ) to believe him. She ached to open her throat and swallow the story he gave her. The sweet taste of honesty was already on her tongue like honey, settling in her stomach, drugging her, dragging her under. Let him be telling the truth. _Please, God, let him be telling the truth._

“We’ll handle it. We always do.” She set her jaw, her clockwork mind already calculating the work ahead of them, weighing the risks and rewards, the various methods to fight back. Their weapons. She would be his strength against all that assailed him - his rock, his fighter. He needed her to stand with him against the Republicans, against the women crawling from the woodwork, all the people throwing stones.

The women in the woodwork. She had built rooms in the house of her mind to store the memories of those women. They were packed away, blonde hair and thick lips, thighs and breasts, eyelids pearlescent like the smooth inside of a seashell, stowed in boxes within rooms within the walls of that house in her mind. Packed away in the past, _He loves me, he loves me not_. Not forgotten, just behind walls. And those walls provided enough structure - just barely enough - to believe him, this time.

But doubt eats away at you like termites.

* * *

 

They had booked the Excelsior hotel for the announcement. Bill Clinton, _William Jefferson Clinton_ , son of Arkansas, golden boy, would enter the '88 race to become President of the United States of America. A swell of support was rising beneath him among Democrats. Since Cuomo's announcement that he wasn’t going to run, a space opened for the blue-eyed, fresh-faced young Southern charmer to make a bid for it. He was a natural, warm and gregarious, with a brilliant and pragmatic firecracker for a wife at his side. Such a promising young political couple, ripe fresh faces greatly needed in stodgy Washington - a beacon of hope for their generation, the Baby Boomers, the anti-Vietnam kids, ready to transform the system from the inside.

It was a hot August evening, two nights before the announcement. Dusk settled around the governor’s mansion, cicadas singing their summer song in the trees. Hillary was at the kitchen table coloring with Chelsea when there was a knock at the door. She heard voices in the foyer - Bill, a state trooper, another woman.

“Evening, Bill,” a woman spoke in greeting. Hillary registered Betsey Wright’s voice, Bill’s chief of staff. Their voices quieted as they moved out of the foyer. Hillary returned her attention to her daughter. She was involved in most conversations with her husband and his staff, but she had so little time with Chelsea these days... Bill would call her in if he needed her.

“Those are beautiful colors, Chelsea,” she said. “What are you drawing?”

They chatted back and forth, Hillary with her chin resting in her palm, elbow on the table, watching Chelsea with a grin. Her little girl, her daughter. Thick curls and pink cheeks, button nose, so smart and so sweet. Her heart ached at her innocence and kindness, and she prayed to herself every day that she could protect her and preserve her childhood for as long as possible. Even on the subject of pierced ears she had pushed back - “When you’re thirteen we’ll talk! Mine aren’t even pierced!”

She looked at the clock on the wall. Eight thirty.

“Time for bed, what do you say?” she asked Chelsea, standing up from the table. Hillary couldn’t help but to prick up her ears as they walked by Bill’s study. The door was closed, but she could hear muffled voices. Bill, Betsey, and someone else.

She held Chelsea’s hand as they climbed the stairs to the second floor. Hillary supervised her preparations for bed, the teeth brushing and face washing, pajama buttoning, and tucked her in. She knelt next to the low bed and pressed a kiss to her daughter's forehead. She cherished these quiet moments.

“Goodnight, sweetheart. We are going to going to wash off the dirt of today,” she said, pecking another kiss on her nose, “and then tomorrow will be a new day and we will stand up strong.” One of their little mantras since Chelsea was a baby. A tradition to keep the calm in the midst of the storms.

“I love you, mommy.”

“I love you too, my girl.”

She flicked off the light and closed the door behind her, making her way back down the stairs. The muffled voices in the study were louder, now. An argument. She reached her hand out to grasp the doorknob, but recoiled as if she had been burned before she could enter - Betsey’s voice cut through her like a knife.

“You will fail, Bill, and you will destroy your wife in the process.” Betsey, on the verge of shouting.

She pressed her ear to the door, feeling a pang of guilt. She wasn’t the eavesdropping type. It had never served her well in the past.

“You’re being ridiculous. Our marriage - our private life--” it was Bill. Betsey cut him off.

“It’s not goddamn private when you’re trying to be the president--” she countered.

“It’s no one’s fucking business, it’s old history--” he exploded.

“It’s not old history Bill, for Christ’s sake, stop lying to me. Stop lying to your _wife_. If you can’t be faithful to her, at least be honest. Protect her from the humiliation. Look what happened to Gary Hart.” Betsey again.

Hillary swallowed. _Humiliation like bile in her throat, acid-hot._

Gary, after making his presidential bid known, had challenged reporters to follow him around and confirm that allegations of extramarital relationships were false. They had photos of him and another woman together on a boat all over the tabloids within a week. _Fool_.

“What about Gennifer, huh? What about Mary-whatshername, what about the others, what do you think it’s going to do to your wife when all of that comes up again in the press? What about Chelsea, Bill?” The other voice, a woman she didn’t recognize. Betsey must have brought her along for back-up. No response from Bill. “Do you think people are going to trust you to run the country if you can’t even be faithful to your wife?”

“What about last week, Bill? Is that _history_?” Betsey demanded.

Last week. Fuck.

Hillary jerked her head away from the door. Her mouth had gone dry as cotton. Gennifer. She knew about that one. She knew of some of them, knew her husband had “caused pain in their marriage”, as had been their phrase of choice. Their phrase to describe the pain like a knife between the ribs each time she confronted him about it. Each time he confessed to being a weak man, not good enough for her, _I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Baby, don’t go, I need you I want you come here._ The time when it got really bad, after he lost in ‘80, when he wanted to leave her. When he said he couldn’t stand her pushing him, dragging him up off the floor. How he wanted someone softer, sweeter, simpler, no hard edges. _Pain in their marriage._ Another mantra, another calm in the storm.

She clenched her jaw, backed away, up the stairs towards their bedroom. She stumbled on the way up, distracted, slammed her knee into the top stair and didn’t feel a thing. Numb, so numb, she hobbled into bed and crawled under the covers fully clothed. She felt humiliation like a dark cloud fill her mind, Betsey and the other woman’s voices screaming through her head. Discussing, analyzing, dissecting the infidelities. They knew more than her. They knew everything. There was nowhere to hide, no privacy, nothing was sacred. What did they think when they looked at her? What kind of sad, pathetic woman must they see? Did they pity her? The thought made her gag.

Her mouth opened into an “O”, a silent scream, and she wrapped her arms around her midsection, collapsing on herself. Their dreams would be shattered by her husband’s weakness. _By your inability to make him happy. To satisfy him._ Ugly, hateful, nagging voices.

 _If you had just changed your name. If you had just been more beautiful. If you had just been more blonde, had more babies, been softer, sweeter. A good wife. If you had just quit the law firm. If you hadn’t pushed him and pushed him. If you had just stayed in the background, pretty wife on his arm._ The voices of her mother-in-law, of men, of women, of the public. Even the voice of Bill. ( _Divorce, I want a divorce_ , he had sometimes sung under his breath when she really raked him over the coals of his own failings.) Faces familiar and strange, pointing fingers, writing columns in newspapers, taking pictures, snap pop flash.

Hours passed, and then Bill was on the bed next to her, gently squeezing her arm.

“Hillary, baby, wake up honey. I need to talk to you.”

And so the story goes again and again, history and the present colliding. But that time, in the early hours of a summer morning in 1987, he was honest, just for moment. Yes, there were other women, and they would talk to the press. And so he couldn’t run... not yet. It was too soon, he was a weak man, he had made so many mistakes. The stories would come up - and they were true, but _Oh, honey, he was so sorry_ \- and they would ruin everything.  Give it a few years to cool off, for people to forget. He would run next time.

And then the charm came out, the false promises. He promised, he promised. No more. No more other women. In the meantime, he would be good to her. He would care for her like he should. _Sorry, he was so very sorry._ Lies, he lied to her face. There would be more women, still, even as the 80’s wound to a close. Lean in close, you can taste the dishonesty.

Two days later at the Excelsior hotel, Bill announced that he would not be entering the presidential race.

Hillary stood by his side, as she would again and again and again. Her tears glimmered in the pops and snaps of flashbulbs.

 

* * *

 


	2. Denial

_I tried to change._

_Closed my mouth more, tried to be softer, prettier, less awake. Fasted for 60 days, wore white, abstained from mirrors, abstained from sex, slowly did not speak another word._

_...But still inside me, coiled deep, was the need to know ... Are you cheating on me?_  

 

* * *

 

  _January 28th, 1998_

 

“How do you not become distracted by that, even for a moment?” Lisa McRee asked.

Hillary felt herself retreat internally, dodged, ducked, dove, and shifted the language of her response to focus on her husband. She could feel the camera peering at her with its gleaming black eye, pricking her skin all over. She was on Good Morning America, putting on the brave face. It was Gennifer Flowers all over again, and once again she leapt into the fray to defend her husband.

She kept her voice flat, calm. Inhale through her nose, exhale. Breathe. Smile.

“In the kind of job my husband has, you cannot afford to be distracted,” she answered. Head tilt, blink, smile. Head tilt back, rub lips together, another smile.

It was true. She wasn’t being dishonest. Bill couldn’t afford to be distracted. Sure, she knew what the “you” really meant in Lisa’s question, but she wasn’t going to answer about _herself_ . Of course she was distracted - the entire goddamn world was talking about her husband fucking around with another woman. Again. The questions from the media were disingenuous enough to make her want to vomit, all the fake concern. “Doesn’t it make you _so sad_ to think of him with another woman? Tell us all about it. Bare your soul to us, to the millions watching. Cry for us.” No, fuck you. Fuck all of you. The rage like a hot coal burned in her chest, the pressure enough to compress the carbon into a diamond, a keen edge to cut them all. Instead she tilted her head and smiled. It was all she could do.

She took time preparing this morning, blonde hair smoothed below her ears, freshly trimmed by her stylist. Another coat of makeup when she got to the television studio, soft powder on her nose, cheeks, chin. Lipstick, gold earrings, deep blue coat buttoned high on her throat, heavy necklace. The weight on her chest calmed her, grounded her. Be strong. Make them love you. But not pity, never pity. Make them respect you. Make them respect your husband.

She was good at the latter, the respect. But she struggled to cultivate the love from the public that came so easily to her husband. People could sense her retreat, could feel her walls, thorny and protective. They brushed up on them when they asked personal questions, when they tried to see inside of her. She left them with scratches on their seeking fingers. She wasn’t easy to love. Not when she was on the defensive, which seemed to be all the time.

Next question.

“Do you believe your husband has told you the full story?” _Stupid question. What the hell do you think I’m going to say to you - no? I think he’s lying? Why do we waste our time with this?_

“I know he has.” Hillary’s response. Soft voice, so sweet and so trusting. She rages inside - no, she doesn’t know if it’s the full story. She just knows what he has told her. She’s not a goddamn psychic. “My husband has told the truth and he will continue to tell the truth.”

Also true. Even when he _was_ fucking around with other women, he came clean to her in the end. There was no reason for him to lie to her this time. (The internal monologue she suppresses, _He never told you about all of them, Hillary, not even in ‘87. Not in the 70’s, either. And he kept going, didn’t he, after that summer morning? Didn’t he want to leave you again? And now he’s the president… maybe he would lie outright to preserve himself.)_

_Is he cheating? Is he cheating on me?_

She pivots the discussion to the meeting between Netanyahu and Arafat this week.

There. What about _that,_ huh? Leaders of Israel and Palestine are talking, the administration is negotiating international peace, and yet here they sit talking about an alleged affair. It’s enough to make her want to scream, to rip off the necklace, tear at her hair, stomp her feet and rend her clothes. God, could you imagine the media response to that? Perhaps that’s what needs to happen. Give the dogs something real to gnaw on. “The First Lady has finally lost it!” _What’s worse, looking jealous or crazy?_

She was cutting in her remarks to Matt Lauer yesterday on the Today Show. Arkansas Hillary bubbled up every now and then, no matter how hard she tried to suppress her. “Right wing conspiracy” would become a phrase to haunt her. Maybe it wasn’t eloquently stated, but perhaps those pointing fingers should sit in front of television cameras and get wheedled and prodded with questions about their spouses’ infidelity. Alleged infidelity. _Alleged_. Maybe they should give a go at having an entire cottage industry exist just to destroy them. Millions of dollars exchanging hands, spewing hate and lies like hot tar foaming up from shrieking gullets. See how fucking eloquent they are under that kind of scrutiny. But no - she needed to pull back. Couldn’t have another Tammy Wynette situation, another “tea and cookies”. Soften her hard edges, breathe, smile.

It wouldn’t be enough, of course, and they would say she was overly guarded in these interviews. Too much of a lawyer, obfuscating the truth.

Fuck it, you really can’t win.

The dark secret was that she was the sacrificial lamb for Bill’s administration. She could try to soften her image, to work with consultants and advisors on her staff to sweeten her up, but she really shone as the warrior wife, the corporate lawyer. The media would feast on every last word she said, and get their fill of outrage. Enough for Bill to seem palatable, a sympathetic character when compared to his acerbic wife (“I mean, can you blame him? She’s a monster, a shrew, a harpy. I bet she doesn’t let him touch her.”) Even the Republicans knew she was the one to be truly afraid of - her willingness to fling herself on the fire, to burn herself alive to keep Bill going at any cost.

She was repulsed by everyone salivating for her husband to fall on his face. _This is your country, too,_ she thought. _Why do you want so badly for your president to fail?_

And so she would fight for her husband, she would fight for his presidency. She would fight for her privacy.

The hopelessness of a battle for privacy fought on the public stage was not lost on her.

 

* * *

 

That summer morning in ‘87, before the announcement scheduled at the Excelsior, they had sat together in their bed and he had laid his transgressions bare. Most of it was old news - she knew about many of the women, their existence if not their names - but this time it was reframed and repackaged, courtesy of Betsey. When he ran for the presidency, his personal life would be fair game. Just look at Gary Hart. Look at the tabloids. Sure, former presidents had had women on the side. But it seemed those stories would now be weaponized against him. Against her. Against Chelsea. They needed time to prepare.

He walked her through Betsey’s arguments against running. She pushed him for details. If they would be denied this opportunity, she wanted him to build the case for her. She wanted to make him work for it. Work for his failure.

“Last week…” she had whispered.

“Last week? Oh, Hill-” he tried to interject.

“I heard. As I was coming up to bed, I heard Betsey. Last week, Bill.” She has been tangling her hands in the sheets, wrapping them around her fingers until it hurt, until they dug into her, pulling and twisting her skin.

“No more, okay?” His voice was soft, soothing. “No more. Please, believe me. Just you.” Lies, lies, lies, saccharine-sweet. “I love you.” One truth.

She swallowed. Cotton balls in her throat, suffocating her. She dug deep, dug into her reserves of courage, the ones she kept to sustain her through the long trials, to stand against the judgement that assailed her from all sides, long before she even stepped foot in the White House. The woman, the corporate lawyer and mother, the political spouse, the advocate, how could she be all of those, how dare she? Courage, take courage. The wells of courage filled by her mother. _We don’t have cowards in this house._ Sweet little five year old Hillary, braids golden like lemonade and tied off with ribbons, punching the bully right in the mouth.

“Why am I not enough?” She flipped her eyes to his, drank from her courage, twisting her fingers tighter and tighter in the sheets. Not the first time her fingers had been wrapped in these sheets, but under different circumstances, usually straining against waves of pleasure. Even just last week. Was it before or after they made love that he had been with the other woman? Was it what she lacked that night that had sent him into the other woman’s arms? Or did he come to her after to try to assuage his guilt? Who was the woman, this time? Another blonde? The emotion was no less keen this morning than it had been last week, then heady with passion, cutting her to the core, opening her up, presenting every last part of herself to her husband’s hands.

Now it was just pain, pure as silver, a knife.

“Hillary…”

“No, Bill. Tell me. Why am I not enough? Why does it take Betsey to convince you? I’m your wife. You chose me. I’ve been faithful to _you_ . Why am I not enough?” _Can’t you see there’s no other man above you? What a wicked way to treat the girl that loves you._ Her courage was failing. She didn’t really want to know the answer.

The raw vulnerability in her voice broke him. His body heaved with the force of his sob.

“You are enough. You are enough.” Gasping, hoarse sobs sawed through his words. “I’m all fucked up inside.”

He was all fucked up. She was fucked up, too. Sure, _last week_ was a surprise. But she knew he fucked around - flirting and touching, kissing. She packed it away, pushed it aside, ultimately allowed it as long as it didn’t stop them from winning. She knew there were reasons driving his infidelity - whether the lack was hers or his, she wouldn’t find out until years later - but she kept the knowledge at arms length. ( _“Compartmentalization”_ would be the diagnosis of armchair psychologists in coming years. She chafed at being analyzed, hated it.)

It was self preservation.

She felt herself balancing on the keen edge of the knife, and the pain, so much pain. She knew this man could be president. Would be, if he didn’t sabotage himself. She had known it since they met at Yale. She had known it since she saw him charm every last person he encountered. And it wasn’t just the charm - he was brilliant. But he needed her, he said. Others said so, too. _They_ would be elected, the young couple, bursting with ideas and passion and life, and he couldn’t do it without her - without her fight and her fire. And she had made her choice 12 years ago when she finally agreed to marry him. She had made her bed, and now she would lie in it.

Then, small feet on the carpet, the creak of their bedroom door opening. Chelsea, rumpled and sweet, eyes puffy from sleep, peering at them. Bill turned his face away from her, swiping away his tears with his palms, trying to hide his shattered expression, collecting himself. Hillary released her hands from the sheets and reached out to her little girl. Her Chelsea. Their one truly good thing.

“Good morning, honey,” she said, calling to her. Her daughter. She would throw herself into a fire for her. She would tie herself to a sinking ship. She would push the knife into her own skin and flay herself alive if it meant Chelsea would be protected. She would fight for this little family, for the partnership she had chosen to forge, for better or worse, with this broken man. For better, she thought, looking at her girl. Forged for the better.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes she wonders what would have happened if the studio lights had fallen just a few inches to the left.

January 26th, 1992. The 60 Minutes interview, when America met her for the first time. Green coat, black headband, long blonde hair and blue eyes, beautiful and imperious and pissed off. One fist clenched, the other clasped by her husband, she set her jaw and defended him. She pierced her zone of privacy, spilling forth the contents to keep him afloat. Threw the life preserver to him and swallowed the salt water to keep him alive.

“I’m here because I love him, and I respect him, and I honor what he’s been through and what we’ve been through together,” she had said, meaning it with every single fibre of her body.

It was the interview when she saved her husband, but destroyed her own image in the process - destroyed any chance of being seen as a widely, eternally beloved figure. They chopped up the “Tammy Wynette” quote and served it to the feasting masses, and a few months later did the same with the “tea and cookies” soundbite, sparking more outrage. The campaign quieted her down after that, pushed a softer image for the rest of the campaign, but the damage had been done to her political identity. Sure, some respected her for what she said, for her outspokenness, but “polarizing” was the narrative pushed by talking heads across the country.

They would send her into the fray again and again, when it became a matter of life or death for Bill’s administration. The damage to Hillary was acceptable if it kept him afloat. The sacrificial lamb.

The interview. Many have watched it, but few have seen the moments, edited out of the final broadcast, when a rack of studio lights fell and nearly crushed the couple huddled on the couch. Many never saw Bill pull her into his arms fast as lightning, press her body to his, hold her so close. Palm pressed to the top of her head, kissing her forehead, grasping her. “Are you alright? Are you okay?” His fierce protectiveness was a reflex built into his bones. He had practice protecting her. He was usually protecting her from himself. Poorly.

The interview also sparked the narrative on a national scale that their marriage was merely a political arrangement. That, perhaps, hurt her the most. But it is hard to choose which, out of thousands, is the deepest cut.

And so sometimes she wonders. What if she had been snuffed out that day? She would have been spared the excruciating pain, not just of Bill’s betrayals, but of the hate, in endless, cascading waves. The burning like salt water in her lungs when she would drown herself for her husband’s career. The bulletproof vest she had to wear on the tour across the country to present her vision for healthcare. The screaming faces, _Bitch, whore, cunt_ , the impossible task of defending herself and her husband while remaining soft and sweet and likeable. The impossible task of being herself, and being the image of herself. The impossible task of being Hillary Rodham, and Hillary Clinton.

She wonders, maybe, but would never wish for it. She would never wish for anything but this life. For all the shit it throws at her, she knows she’s blessed to live it. She knows that she is blessed to be the mother of a beautiful daughter. She knows that she is blessed when she meets people in the country who struggle on a fundamental level every single day - to pay for food, for shelter, to see a doctor. Babies not cared for, children without good schools. The road is long and her work is not yet done.

And so she will always choose to march on. _We don’t have cowards in this house._

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the sweet comments on the first chapter. I hope I can do justice to this incredible, fascinating & inspirational couple's story.
> 
> I've got 5 chapters drafted so far, and will try to post daily through to the final 13th chapter (if I can keep up) - onward!
> 
> (And yes, it is a love story. I promise.) <3


	3. Anger

_If it's what you truly want ... I can wear her skin over mine. Her hair over mine. Her hands as gloves. Her teeth as confetti. Her scalp, a cap. Her sternum, my bedazzled cane. We can pose for a photograph, all three of us. Immortalized ... you and your perfect girl._

_I don't know when love became elusive. What I know is, no one I know has it. My father's arms around my mother's neck, fruit too ripe to eat. I think of lovers as trees ... growing to and from one another. Searching for the same light._

_Why can't you see me? Why can't you see me? Why can't you see me?_

_Everyone else can._

 

* * *

  
August 15th, 1998

 

She had been surprised by her capacity for rage, how deep her reserves went.

The confession. Another morning, the third and final time her husband would wake her with a deadly surprise, and the first time she really thought that his fuck up would destroy their lives, absolutely and completely. There’s something about Augusts - disaster thrives in the oppressive, late-summer heat, seeking September's release. Her initial response was sobbing. Heaving sobs, gagging, mouth wide open. She didn’t know the details yet - she would learn those in time, each new revelation another cut, a little more salt in the wounds, rubbing her raw - but she knew that he had lied to her. _You are enough. You are enough,_ he had said. _When you lie to me, you lie to yourself._

Time passed, her shuddering shoulders were their metronome. Bill paced back and forth, repeating “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over. Hearing his pitiful mewling snapped her out of her grief long enough to collect herself, and for the first time she raised her walls to keep her husband out. She watched him pace, her eyes glittering. She blinked.

“You will tell Chelsea,” she stated. Cold as ice. Cold as strangers accused her of being. She watched his face crumble, detached.

But she didn’t remain cold. It wasn’t her nature.

Bill was known for his fearsome temper, for explosions, often physical. Hillary, too, could explode, could also be physical when her husband was the target. Her words were sharper than his, finely-honed, dripping with derision. She could destroy everyone but her husband with a few words - he was the only one who could take it and remain standing. It was something of a tradition in their marriage, in the dark periods in Arkansas. He would screw up and the explosion would follow, then a shove or a slammed door and, eventually, soul-searing sex. The first time she called him _bastard_ he had slammed his fist into the wall next to her. When they fucked later she dragged her nails down his back, hard enough to draw blood, and he trembled in her arms. The morning after, she had traced her fingers over the marks, pressed her mouth to them, made him whole again.

The rumors about the lamp were untrue. A lamp is too difficult to throw, too heavy for precision, and plugged into a wall besides. It was actually a vase, blue and white and expensive. She picked it up and chucked it with all of the power she could muster, all of her grief, watched it smash into a million pieces against the wall. She wanted her chance to destroy something, even if it was something small.

She thought for a moment about rubbing her hands in the shards.

It wasn’t the only thing she threw in those dark days. During another argument, she ripped her hands over a desk, the contents spilling over the side. She screamed, got right up in his face, tore him apart. Crucified him. Hot, scalding rage. Salt water rage. It was her turn to sing the songs he had sung back in Arkansas, “Divorce, I want a divorce.” Then, seeking further destruction, she turned to the bookshelves, tossing books to the floor. A copy of Leaves of Grass. She snatched it up in her hand, her knuckles white, and spun to face him.

“You are the worst thing that ever happened to me,” she growled through gritted teeth, and flung the book at his stupid fucking face. “Don’t you ever fucking touch me again.”

 

* * *

 

Hillary stands in front of the mirror. It has been two days since Bill confessed to her. She’s still cold, the explosive arguments to come are still building inside of her, forming like a mushroom cloud.

Her eyes are puffy. She reaches up her fingers, tries to smooth them. She cups the sides of her face, pulls the skin taught, lifts, and looks again. She tries to picture herself with dark hair. Tries to remember what she looked like at twenty-two, twenty-three. She pushes her tongue against the inside of her lips, puffs them out, imagines them thicker. She drops her arms, turns her head to the side, studies her profile. Her blonde hair is flat from her pillow, the fine wrinkles on her pale skin are shadowed in the lamplight, but even she can see the power in her finely arched brows, straight nose, her deep set blue eyes. She turns her head the other way, tilts up her chin, looks over her slender neck, the hollow at the base of her throat. She could still pass for beautiful, she thinks.

She hasn’t seen Bill much over the past 48 hours. He spent the afternoon with Starr providing his testimony and is now gathered with their closest advisors in the solarium to craft his public statement, which is supposed to air live this evening. The hours are ticking down, two to go. She doesn’t want to join them. She doesn’t want to feel everyone’s eyes on her. She doesn’t want to help him. But she knows she has to. For the first time since Arkansas, she doesn’t bother with lipstick, doesn’t bother to brush her hair.

She enters the solarium to chaos and stands in the doorway, absorbing the sights and sounds - a cacophony of voices making suggestions, Bill sitting at the table with his head in his hands, his eyes closed, clearly overwhelmed. This is what happens when she leaves his side for a moment, she thinks. The peanut gallery takes over. Through the din, a newscaster's voice blares from a television set, “...with love letters and gifts exchanged as recently as January of this year.” Her stomach lurches. Someone sees her enter the room and turns off the sound.

The voices quiet and faces turn in her direction. She feels exposed. Chelsea walks over to her and stands by her side. Bill doesn’t look up.

There’s silence for a few moments, and then she speaks.

“Well, Bill, this is your speech. You’re the one who got yourself into this mess, and only you can decide what to say about it.” It’s not meant as a punishment. He’s always performed better when people leave him alone to prepare, and she knows how high the stakes are. It’s another life preserver she throws to him, but she won’t drown herself for him this time. Besides, it got everyone in the room to shut up, if only for a few moments.

Bill looks up at her. _He only sees me when he needs me,_ she thinks. Something almost like a grateful smile forms on his face, just barely. She turns on her heel and walks out of the room. Self preservation. Chelsea follows her.

 

* * *

 

She overhears someone make a comment at her expense. “The First Lady is the only person in America that could hear a joke about cigars and not get it.”

She had considered avoiding the details at first, but she has always had a thirst for knowledge. She had stuck her head in the sand for most of their 23 years of marriage, learning only the information allowed to her, either through Bill’s semi-truthful confessions, or overheard through closed doors. Now the entire country had access to every single date and detail, and she could read along at will. Besides, she was weighing her options for the end of Bill’s term. Contrary to what she screamed at him in the heat of their arguments, she hadn’t yet settled on divorce. She was building the case for her future, either together or alone. There were reams of information to assess and compile before she could come to a conclusion, and as was typical of her legalistic instincts, she would be thorough.

And so she did get the joke about cigars. She also knew Bill had met with Monica on their wedding anniversary in ‘97, though by that point he wasn’t fucking around with her anymore. It was a damage control meeting. _Fool_. She could pick out any date on which Bill and Monica had been together and map it into her own memories, thrust it into her own timeline and then step back and see how it all fit together. It was an exercise she tried with each date in the record, equally fascinated and horrified by the grotesque picture it created.

February 28th, 1996. The semen-stained dress. The first and only time her husband had come with this other woman. Disgust like a snake around her middle, coiling around her, stealing her breath away. She closed her eyes, forced herself to imagine it. She felt the bile boil in her throat. She was pounding on the doors of the house in her mind now, screaming up and down the halls, calling for the women to come out, come and tell her all of their secrets. _What do you want with my husband? What does he want with you?_ She was hit by the full force of their existence, suffocated by them as she unpacked them, one after the other. She imagined them, tried to recreate how her husband might have held them. Was he tender with them? Passionate? How many did he say he loved? She imagined their hands on him, dozens of hands grasping out to him, hundreds, every woman in America.

She thought of her own hands on her husband, reaching and touching, and his hands reaching back. It was no rare occurrence - she didn’t need to strain to recall his hands on her. Any date he had been touching Monica was surrounded by days touching and holding his wife - it was constant, his hands reaching out to find her whenever she was near. At state dinners, he would find her in her seat, eye her up, wink playfully. After the rope line and the dancing they would remain together, alone in the ballroom, swaying in the dark long after the music ended and everyone had gone home. In meetings she would catch him gawking at her as she spoke, bowled over by her mere existence in his periphery. How smart, how beautiful.

And this is what would confound anyone who cared enough to really, truly take a close look at their marriage. Somehow, despite his infidelity, his passion for his wife was never diminished. His brokenness did not hinge on anything she lacked. But people couldn’t handle that truth. They couldn’t bear the nuance of it.

He was sleeping on the couch now, in a room next to their bedroom. Shamefully, he would lie awake at night and think of making love to his betrayed wife. He would grasp his hard cock in his hand and close his eyes and think about the heart shape of her ass under her skirt, the hint of thigh when she crossed her legs. He could conjure up the exact tone and timbre of her sighs, could almost feel her breath on his neck.

People who said his wife was a cold woman had never seen her in earrings and nothing else. They had never seen her reading in the bath, glasses perched on her nose, a book in her hands. Her hair piled on top of her head, curling in the heat and steam, her cheeks flushed pink and pretty. They had never seen her stand up in the tub, never watched the hot water run down her naked body. They had never felt her soft mouth, her warm kisses, her tongue and teeth. They didn’t know how he couldn’t get enough of touching her. No one cared much to share the stories of the two of them caught pressed up against the wall in White House hallways, or Hillary in his lap in the Oval Office whispering in his ear, her hand between his legs. Maybe they were afraid to expose any hint of her sexuality.  Maybe they couldn’t comprehend that she could be powerful and brilliant _and_ desirable. Maybe it was safer to keep her boxed up, to push the image of a prudish and cold woman. Maybe they needed to make sure women didn’t think they could be everything. But she was - she was everything.

He missed her laugh as much as her touch. He missed talking to her one on one - they were speaking, but with advisors present, and about policy or projects or foreign affairs at hand. He missed sitting up in bed together, propped up on pillows, chatting philosophical or political, historical. He missed joking with her. Once he had made her laugh so hard she thumped the back of her head on the headboard. They had doubled over after that, and as he had kissed the back of her head, he joked that it wasn’t the first time he’d made her hit her head on a headboard.

He remembered how her nails felt on his back, the heady lust of fucking after fighting. He loved to get her riled up about some topic, debate with her until she was jabbing her finger in the air with each point she made, and then grab her face and kiss her hard. Her passion brought him to his knees. He thought about her legs wrapped around his waist, thought about the look on her face when he would push inside of her, and came with a soft groan.

In the coming weeks, in fits of desperation, he would sometimes reach out to touch her - to place a hand on her waist, or to kiss her cheek. She would pull away unless they were in public, when the world was watching. It was the first time their kisses were as fabricated as people had often suggested.

He didn’t think he could survive it.

> _“If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles._  
>  _You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,_  
>  _But I shall be good help to you nevertheless_  
>  _And filter and fiber your blood._  
>  _Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,_  
>  _Missing me one place search another,_  
>  _I stop some where waiting for you”_  
>  ― **Walt Whitman** , **Leaves of Grass**

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Diane Blair's notes, made available to the public after her death, illuminate a few things I love about Hillary: she apparently swears a good bit in private, and she was super goddamn vocal about how pissed off she was at her & Bill's treatment by the press. Other sources have indicated she could have a temper, which I kind of adore. Whether the rumors about her throwing things at Bill were or were not true, I just really wanted her to. For me. For all of us.
> 
> Ultimately, I wanted to give her room to be mad in this chapter. I think she's earned it.


	4. Apathy

_So what are you gonna say at my funeral, now that you've killed me?_

_Here lies the body of the love of my life, whose heart I broke without a gun to my head. Here lies the mother of my children, both living and dead._  

_Rest in peace, my true love, who I took for granted._

 

* * *

 

_Spring, 1971_

 

Bill slapped his hand on the kitchen counter.

“I’m coming with you!”

“I - what?”

“I’m coming with you to California!” he announced again.

They were at the beach house that Bill shared with three roommates, clever young men with bright eyes, easy laughs and big plans. Growing up with a house full of brothers meant she felt at ease in the company of males, and Hillary enjoyed spending time with the four men on their front porch on warm spring evenings, batting around ideas for saving the world, debating politics. Tonight, she sat on the kitchen counter in shorts and a Yale sweater, her glasses pushed up on top of her head. She swung her legs back and forth, feet bare and sandy. Bill stood between her thighs, facing her, just below eye level.

Sounds of laughter, music and beer bottles clinking filtered through the kitchen door, left ajar when they came into the kitchen seeking refuge from the party crowded in the living room. Hillary lifted her own beer to her lips, watching Bill look up at her as she drank.

“Oh yeah? Who says I’d let you come, anyways?” she teased. She took another swig, leaning her head all the way back to drain the bottle. Bill watched the movements of her throat as she swallowed. She knew what she was doing, knew he was watching her. She could feel his eyes on the column of her neck.

Contrary to what some might come to believe based on how she would dress in later years, she was always very much aware of the effect her body could have on those around her. That awareness would, ultimately, influence the length of her skirts and the cuts of her suit jackets, the turtlenecks and thick sweaters, the high collars and long sleeves of her inaugural gowns. Tonight, she was particularly aware of Bill’s eyes on her bare thighs. And his hands. His fingers were toying at the cuff of her shorts.

“Oh, you’d let me _come_ ,” he said it with a wink, loaded with innuendo. She laughed mid-swallow, coughing through the mouthful of beer. He pulled the bottle out of her hand, set it on the counter, and pulled her face down to his. A bit of beer wet on her lips - he ran his tongue across them, tasting the hops and her skin, and kissed her. She lifted her legs and wrapped them around his waist, pulling him closer. His other hand was in her hair now, twisting in the strands, tugging gently. She parted her lips with a sigh, her eyes slipping closed. He released her hair, slid his hands down over her back and waist, gripped her bottom and pulled her off the counter. She yelped, flung her arms around his shoulders, laughing against his lips. He captured her mouth with another kiss, hands grasping her though the fabric of her shorts. Her legs tightened around his waist.

Doug burst through the kitchen door.

“BILL! Oh -” he skidded to a halt when he saw them tangled up together. Bill kept Hillary in his arms, spinning around so he was looking at his roommate over her shoulder. She ducked her head into the crook of his neck, laughing and blushing, clinging to him.

“Hey man, we were just about to go for a walk,” Bill said, winking over her shoulder. Doug smirked, backing out of the kitchen, and flashed an “ok” sign with his hand as he pulled the kitchen door shut behind him.

Hillary could feel his arousal pressing against the crotch of her shorts. She tightened her legs again, rolled her hips and wriggled in his arms, and planted a kiss on his shoulder. He groaned, squeezing her bottom.

“Ooh, you are b-a-a-d,” he murmured into her hair, drawing out the word in his Arkansas drawl.

They stumbled out of the back door onto the small porch. Bill reached out and swatted her ass as she passed by him. She flashed a wicked grin over her shoulder and tore off down the steps and onto the beach, skipping through the sand. He watched her for a moment, taking her in.

“Having trouble walking, honey?” she called to him, and threw back her head with a wicked laugh. She paused, turned to face him, and pulled her sweater up over her head, tossing it to the ground. “Come on, Billy, come get me!”

It didn’t take long - she only had 10 feet on him when he bounded down the stairs, skipping all of them in single a leap, and set off after her. Within seconds he was upon her, his arms winding around her waist. He hauled her up and over his shoulder and she shrieked, her glasses slipping off her head and onto the sand.  He stepped over them gingerly, turned his face and pressed a wet, smacking kiss to her hip. She laughed and laughed.

“Hmm, what should I do with you now?” he asked, and set off in the direction of the ocean.

“Don’t you _dare_ , William Jefferson Clinton! _Bill!_ ” she was pounding on his back now, laughing and shrieking. He ran into the surf, the cold water rushing around his ankles. “ _Don’t you dare!”_ she screamed again. He spun around, laughing at her kicking legs, her fruitless squirming. He finally relented, setting her down on her feet in front of him, and she planted her hands on his chest as she regained her balance.

She was out of breath from laughter, a bit unsteady, looking up at him with blinking eyes, blind as a bat without her glasses. He looked back. Her cheeks were flushed, her chest rising and falling with each breath, her eyes impossibly blue. Her soft hair fell over bare shoulders, over candy cane collarbones. His eyes drank her in, standing in her shorts and bra, goosebumps on her skin from the cool ocean breeze. He felt his heart squeeze in his chest.

“I’m coming with you to California” he said again, suddenly, more serious now. She furrowed her brows.

“But the McGovern campaign,” she rebutted immediately, searching his eyes. Bill was supposed to be heading down South for the summer to help oppose Nixon’s bid for re-election - he had gone on endlessly about how excited he was to get out there and start talking to people, to win them over. “Why do you want to give up the opportunity to do something you love to follow me to California?”

“For _someone_ I love, that’s why,” he whispered. “Besides, you asked me to come get you, just now. So, I’m coming.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“...You love me?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He picked her up again, this time carrying her like a bride in his arms. He deposited her in the sand near where her glasses had fallen and sat next to her. She was immediately in his arms, straddling him, kissing him. He groaned into her mouth, bucked his hips up against her, his hands on her bare skin, her waist and back, her hips and thighs, then up in her hair. They kissed and kissed as the sun fell below the horizon, cocooned in the hushed sighing of salt water waves washing on the shore behind them, so in love.

 

* * *

 

She was alone on the beach.

As alone as she ever could be. Secret Service agents were never far away.

Despite everything going on, they had decided to take their annual trip to Martha’s Vineyard for their family vacation. Bill came and went from the island throughout their stay, his work was never done. He slept on the couch downstairs in the house they rented. They didn’t say much to each other.

Of the ordeal, the loneliness was the word part, she had decided.

Even worse than the humiliation, even worse than the self doubt.. She hadn’t just lost her lover - she had lost her only true confidant.

For all of his failings, Bill was only person in the world she could open herself to, wholly and completely. In the years that would follow, letters written to close friends would be leaked to the press. Even private notes written by one of her closest friends, Diane Blair, documenting many of their personal conversations (including those they would have about this particular event), would end up accessible to the public. While she had a network to rely on for support, she would never share her most sacred, tender, vulnerable truths with any of them. The risk was too great. Bill, for all of his failings, kept her secrets.

She was isolated. And it was unbearable.

By now the screaming in her mind had stopped; the banging on doors, the pounding. The women had all tumbled out of their rooms now, beckoned by her calling. She stood with them toe to toe, taking them in. She looked them in eye, with no intent to compare herself or to measure up against them. It didn’t matter anymore, she decided. All of the rage had been sucked out of her, replaced by a calm like the eye of a hurricane. She imagined herself on the rope line, each woman filing past. She smiled. She extended a hand to them. Introduced herself, _Hello, I’m Hillary. I’m Bill’s wife._

She wandered the hallways, crept down the hallway and tiptoed over the creaking floorboards, and softly tapped on the closed door she found there. Marilyn, Marilyn, come out, come out. Come talk to me, come tell me your secrets.

_Marilyn._

The name lashed her like a white hot whip, branding her. Marilyn Jo Jenkins. The only woman Bill had really, truly considered leaving her for. ( _Not the only Marilyn to cause strife in a presidential marriage - just ask Jackie Kennedy._ Hillary chuckled sourly to herself at the thought.)

Contrary to Hillary’s hopes and Bill’s promises, their marriage did not improve after his ‘87 confession. He won re-election in Arkansas the following year, remaining governor, but - perhaps in childish retribution for Betsey’s interference in his presidential aspirations - he shut her out. From his staff. From his heart. He would later confess his shame in that dark period, his efforts to sabotage their marriage. He couldn’t bear to be with her. He couldn’t bear the shame he felt for leashing her to him, only to fail her over and over again. He couldn’t bear how he had wounded her. He loathed himself for letting her down.

And so, in a fit of self-destruction, he had doubled down on the behaviour that had driven them further from their dreams in the first place, falling into the arms of a blonde Arkansas divorcee. She asked little of him, and offered less. He thought she was just what he needed, for a while.

She and Bill only reconciled in 1990, and the effort had left them both with more than their fair share of scars.

Hillary wrapped her arms around her knees and steadied herself as the memory washed over her. She knew that ultimately, it was never really about any of the women.

She ran her fingers through the cool Menemsha sand and looked North over the glistening Atlantic, at the anchored sailboats bobbing offshore.

It was Bill. It would always be him.

 

* * *

 

When she returned to the rental house, she was informed that Diane had called and left a message for her. She couldn’t bear to return the call. Not yet. Maybe next week.

Instead, she made her way upstairs and crawled into the empty bed she usually shared with her husband, and curled up on her side on top of the blankets. She didn’t move when she heard footsteps behind her, felt the weight of a body crawl in beside her. She knew it was Chelsea without looking.

“Hi mama,” she said softly, curling up behind her mom. Hillary rolled onto her back and turned her head to face her daughter.

“Hi sweetheart,” she whispered.

“You holding up okay?” Chelsea asked, her head propped up, cheek resting on her fist.

“I think so,” Hillary answered, but tears streamed down from the corners of her eyes, wetting the pillowcase.

Chelsea reached a hand out to brush away her mom’s tears, just like her mom had done for her so many times before.

“Daddy really does love you, you know.” Chelsea had almost been more angry with Bill than Hillary had. She had grown up believing that all the terrible things people said about her dad were untrue - and usually they were. This had been a stinging betrayal. Her heart broke for her mother.

“I know, honey,” Hillary whispered. She inhaled one wavering breath. “It’s just hard.”

Chelsea leaned over to gently kiss her mom’s forehead. “And I love you, too.”

“I love you, too, my girl.” She marvelled at her daughter, now 18. A woman! She couldn’t believe it. She’d be going back to California soon, back to Stanford - she’d flown out for a few weeks when the news broke. She looked at her and saw all of the opportunity in the world - she saw the woman who would inherit the future of the country she and her husband were shaping. She felt, as she often did, moved at once by the privilege and the burden of their responsibility.

Hillary closed her eyes. She was so tired.

“We are going to going to wash off the dirt of today,” Chelsea said quietly, pulling a blanket at the foot of the bed up and over her mom, tucking her in, “and then tomorrow will be a new day and we will stand up strong.” She squeezed her mom’s shoulder, and then rolled off the bed, closing the door quietly behind her as she left.

Hillary snuggled deeper under the soft quilt. Her arm reached out across the bed and felt the emptiness there. She pulled a pillow from her husband’s side to her chest and wrapped her arms around it. Her shoulders shook as she wept. In the back of her mind, she couldn't believe that she still had tears left in her to cry.

Something small inside of her died that night - but something was released, too, a tiny knot unravelling. She wept at the loss, and the release.

In the limbo between waking and dreaming, she decided that she would stay with him. It was no grand, passionate, explosive decision. Like love, it came to her in a whisper.

The pillow was damp with tears when she finally fell asleep.

 

* * *

 


	5. Emptiness

_She sleeps all day. Dreams of you in both worlds_

_God was in the room when the man said to the woman, "I love you so much. Wrap your legs around me. Pull me in, pull me in, pull me in." Sometimes when he'd have her nipple in his mouth, she'd whisper, "Oh, my God." That, too, is a form of worship._

_Her hips grind, pestle and mortar, cinnamon and cloves._

 

* * *

 

_January 20th, 1993_

 

“Doesn’t Hillary look beautiful tonight?” Bill asked, and the crowd roared in agreement.

Bill held her hand, beaming with pride. His beautiful wife, the love of his life, his heart and soul and joy.

She did look beautiful that winter night. The night of the inaugural balls. It was the culmination of everything they had fought for together.

Her dress had been made to fit her body, deep purple-blue, the color of a bruise and the color of unity between the two political parties. The neckline rose to her throat, her wrists, her ankles, but clung close. Tiny waist cinched with a belt, wide hips sheathed in waves of soft fabric - Bill could hardly touch her without flushing deep red. She knew, and she was proud.

Her hair was twisted high on her head, a crown of thick golden braid. It exposed her long, slender neck, which he took advantage of backstage when no one was looking, wrapping an arm around her waist and pressing the softest kiss to her throat. She responded with a quiet sigh, her eyes slipping closed just for a moment. He pulled back after, he couldn’t let himself go too far, they would be called onstage to dance in a few moments. But he couldn’t help but gawk, and she welcomed his gaze.

She had always been beautiful to him - the raw beauty of their years at Yale, long blonde hair in waves down her back, no makeup, crystalline pure. The bluest eyes he had ever seen. She would come to him at night after hours at the library and he would tease her about her orange pants, her purple hat, pulling them off with impatient hands, wanting her bare, needing her like breathing. Freed of her clothes, she was all soft pale skin, wide eyes, gleaming hair cascading over bare shoulders and breasts. The hollow bowl of her stomach, hip bones hard and sweet as candy, broad curve of hip and thigh. His palm on her chest, his fingertips, tracing her body from throat to sternum to soft belly, how she would arch her back to meet his touch, how she would sigh for him. He would climb up her body, press hot kisses to her mouth, make her tremble, tongue sweet and tart as lemonade.

Tonight, his mouth went dry remembering.

And tonight, she was a different kind of beautiful, so regal and proud and so untouchable to everyone but him. He took deep pleasure in that knowledge as they made their way onstage, his hand resting on the small of her back, stroking her spine through the jeweled fabric, so protective. As the crowd cheered the band struck up a song, he pulled her close to begin their first dance of the evening. He looked down at her, beaming. His wife, only his to hold. She didn’t like to be touched by anyone but him, was warm but not physical with other people. He watched her face as they danced, her cheekbones flush with excitement and rouge, thick black lashes, so glamorous. When she smiled up at him, he could see the delicate overbite that brought him to his knees over and over and over again. A different kind of beautiful tonight, but still so much the same.

“I love you,” he whispered, tilting his head close to her ear. He could smell her perfume, warm vanilla and heady with crushed flowers, and beneath that, her skin, her hair. Dancing in front of a crowd was difficult when it was with his wife. He couldn’t help the heat in his touch, the intimacy.

She pulled her face back to smile up at him, lips parted, a laugh. “I love you, too.”

They could have a whole conversation up here and no one would know what they were saying. They weren’t miked. He pulled her close again, pressed his mouth against her ear, just for a moment, and breathed, “ _I want you_.”

Despite attending nearly a dozen balls that night, the returned to the White House full of energy, cheeks flushed from the cold night air as they stumbled into their new bedroom, still decked in their finery. They had shared a tumbler of scotch in the limousine on the way from the last ball to their new home - they usually never rode together, too much risk, but made a rare exception tonight - and the heat from the liquor still smoldered low and deep inside of them.

Hillary stumbled into the room first, giddy and silly, and spun around at the foot of the bed, arms raised, head tilted back with mirth, the skirt of her gown fanning around her waist. Bill followed, closing the door behind him with a snick, and leaned back against it to watch her. His heart swelled to see her joyful. He let her dance alone for a moment, and then approached her, reaching out his arms to pull her close again, mirroring their eleven very public dances but holding her differently this time, so much closer, tighter. His palms settled on her waist, in the curves above her hip bones, thumbs pressing into her belly, fingers splayed against her back, pulling her body to his, hips flush against hips. She dropped her arms to his shoulders, draped them around him, her hands dangling gently across his back.

This time it was she who leaned in first, hot breath against his ear, scotch and sex on her mouth.

“ _I want you_ ,” her voice low and deep, in a tone that made his eyes slip shut. Her cultivated image, the jewelry, the speeches, the suits and skirts and scarves worn like armor to protect her from the world, made him all the more grateful for the moments when it fell away, just for him.

“I want you, too, baby,” his breath hitched in his throat, voice urgent and full of desire. She leaned back, her hands running along his shoulders, his chest, under the lapels of his jacket. Pressing her hands underneath, she slipped the coat off, down his arms, to the floor. He released her waist to allow the sleeves to slide away and caught her hands in his, pulling them behind her back and crushing his body to hers. She looked up at him, still so proud, so regal, her graceful neck, chin turned up defiantly. He dipped his head, exhaled a breath along her cheek, her jaw. He felt her tremble against him. He brought his mouth closer, just barely brushing the skin beneath her earlobe. He used his teeth to slip one earring from her ear, spitting it to the floor, leaving one unblemished, unpierced ear bare. He exhaled another breath, pressed a kiss to the soft lobe, and then dragged his tongue up the shell of her ear.

He heard her gasp, felt her body twitch, felt her hips roll against his. He persisted, gently sucking her earlobe between his lips and teeth, dragging his lips down to the delicate skin behind her ear. He could feel her chest rise and fall with her breathing, deeper, more laboured now. He pulled away to look at her face, to drink her in, her eyes closed now, lips parted. So beautiful, so fucking beautiful, he releases her hands and brings his palms up to cup her cheeks, bringing his mouth down to hers in a kiss that starts gentle, tender, but deepens, tongue pressing into hers, tasting her, honey sweet and thick as molasses. She moans into his mouth and it’s his turn to roll his hips against her, he can’t help it, this perfect woman, her power over him is overwhelming. He feels her hands at his waist, tugging at his belt, then the button of his pants, deft fingers sliding the zipper down. Even the feeling of her hands slipping over the front of his pants, over his cock through the fabric, is enough to elicit a deep moan from him. His knees shake, and he feels her smile against his lips. She knows her own power.

Her hands are at his throat now, pulling at his bowtie, unravelling it but leaving it hanging around his neck. Hands at his chest, first attempting the buttons but then ripping his shirt open in impatience, pressing eager fingers against the bare flesh as she exposes it. He’s paralyzed, watching her work, watching her watch him, watching her dip her head to kiss the skin below his collarbone. Watching her kneel before him, kissing her way down his stomach, down the path of skin in the opening of his shirt, pulling his slacks down to his ankles. She kneels before him in the pool of her purple gown and presses her hot mouth to the front of his briefs. He can hardly look, eyes snapping shut, the sight overwhelms him. She knows, looks up at him through those thick lashes, those wicked blue eyes. “Look at me, honey.”  Another open mouth kiss against his hard cock through the fabric, hands following her mouth to the waistband, pulling them down his thighs, releasing him.

He gazes down at her through hooded eyes, feels her warm, soft hands up over his thighs, over his hips. Every ounce of desire pent up inside him, building all evening, threatens to overflow. Her lips part; “Fuck, baby,” he groans, and then her tongue is on him, flicking the head, drawing him into her mouth. Regal wife in her jewelled gown, kneeling in her pool of silk, with his hard cock in her mouth. She looks up at him with those big blue eyes and he trembles. She blinks, taking him deeper into her throat, and then caving her cheeks she draws her head back once, twice. His hips jerk forward, he’s too close to the edge now, already, her name is on his lips like sugar. “Hillary, baby, I’m socloseIcan’t-” he reaches a hand down to cup her cheek, to still her mouth. She releases him, flashes a wicked grin, rocks back on her heels.

“What do you want, baby,” she asks. Her mouth is swollen from his kisses and his cock. She strokes her palms over his thighs. “What do you want to do to me?”

He’s stunned by her for a moment, still can’t believe his luck after all these years. Can’t believe this woman lets him touch her, can’t believe she wants him back. He steps out of the fabric around his feet, bends over, thrusts his arms under hers, around her back, and pulls her to her feet. She stumbles against him, laughing low her in throat, reaching a hand up to pull off her remaining earring. He circles her waist with his arms and lifts her off her feet, walks her back towards the bed, places her on the edge. She reaches her arms out to him and with a final push she rids him of his shirt and bowtie. Aside from her earrings, she’s still fully clothed. He licks his lips, his mouth dry from arousal, and kneels reverently before her.

A palm on her ankle, then up her calf, behind her knee, up under her dress. Her legs are bare, she hates stockings, went without tonight. He pushes the skirt out of his way, up onto her lap, and ducks his head to press a kiss to the inside of her knee. She parts her thighs for him. He grins against her skin, thinking of their wedding, and the tradition of a garter that, among most wedding traditions, they tossed aside. Untraditional woman. In some ways. His mouth travels higher up her thigh and she lays back on the bed. Now his fingers follow his mouth, slowly, slowly, up to the apex of her thighs, brushing just barely against where her silk panties meet skin. He rises from his knees, wanting to watch her face, stands between her legs and drags one fingertip gently over the front of her wet panties. Her mouth opens, her eyes widen, gaze locked with his, his beautiful wife. His whole hand now, cupping her, holding her. Her head snaps back, and she responds with her hips, rolling them against his hand, pushing back, and he’s rewarded with breathy gasps from parted lips. He steps back from her, pushes her thighs together, grasps the waistband of her panties and slips them down, over her hips, knees, ankles. He pushes her legs apart again, deliciously bare under her gown now, his eyes running down over her bare legs, bare sex. His cock twitches, he’s so _fucking_ hard, he can barely see straight, it takes every ounce of strength not to push himself inside her, to take her right now.

She sits up, chest heaving, and stands before him. “Help me with this dress, honey,” she says, turning away from him, that husky voice again. He reaches up with trembling fingers, manages somehow to release the clasp at the nape of her neck. He pushes the bodice down over her shoulders, her arms. Then, hands at her waist, he pushes the skirt down over her hips until she’s left bare, finally, standing in waves of jewels and silk at her ankles. He pulls her to him, her back to his front, wraps his arms around her, hands everywhere, her stomach, narrow waist, slender ribs and up over her breasts, fingertips brushing over hard nipples, tracing her collarbone, resting in the hollow at the base of her throat. Another hand between her thighs, slipping between her lips, into the hot, wet silk there. His cock is pressed up against her ass, he feels her pressing back against him, _fuck_. He’s whispering in her ear now, “I want to make love to you, honey. I can’t wait to feel you, I want to be inside of you, my love, my love,” his voice deep, rumbling in his chest, reverberating through her body, his tongue on her ear, lips against her skin.

She turns to face him, cheeks flushed, feeling the ache for him at the core of her being, and settles back on the bed - their bed - crawls back away from him. He tries to pause, to take her in, to absorb the golden light on her skin, strands of her golden hair loosened from the braids, golden, everything golden, and her blue eyes and parted pink lips. “Come here, Bill, baby,” she says, and he does, crawling over her, covering her, falling between her thighs. She smiles, exhales, so soft, so sweet, so beautiful. He lowers his face to hers, almost in prayer, presses his mouth to hers as he guides himself inside of her, “God, fuck, baby,” spills from her mouth, or maybe his mouth, or both, as he pushes his cock into her, so hot and wet around him. She feels so full, so whole. Arousal is tight like a coil inside their bodies, eyes closed and then open, he looks down at her, pulling out and then pushing into her again, “You feel sofuckinggood,” skin on skin, one hand up to her breast, fingertips on a pink nipple. Then higher, his thumb up to her open mouth, tracing over her teeth, her tongue, she sucks her lips around his finger, eyes on him, never looking away. Too much, it’s almost too much for him, her cheeks caving, soft tongue flicking the pad of his thumb, his cock buried deep inside of her, hot wet tight silk. He lowers his face to her chest, pulling a nipple into his mouth, between his teeth, and she moans and moans, “Oh God, oh God” around his fingers.

He lifts his gaze to look at her face, hovers over her, absorbs how fucking good she looks as he slides into her body, how good she sounds gasping for him, his fingers between her teeth, his own moans, his overwhelming love for her. He pushes into her again and again and again, deeper, as deep as he can be, and feels her press back, grinding her hips against his, the most beautiful thing he has ever felt, the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. He pulls his wet fingers out of her mouth, leans back, drags those fingers down her writhing body, watches her arch her body up against his touch the way he loves. His fingers slip down between them, to where their bodies connect, his thumb pressing against her clit, circling, dragging over and over. Another moan from deep in her throat, her eyes roll back in her head, and then she’s looking back at him. “Mmm, touch me honey,” she breathes, plump bottom lip between teeth, thighs shaking. He thrusts into her again and again, so deep, touching her, stroking her, feels the roll of her hips, feels her so tight around him, then tighter still, trembling. “I’m going to-” her breath hitches, “Yes, love, come for me, my love,” he answers, their words tumbling over each others. Her mouth opens wide, he can see the cherry red roof of her mouth, the white crescent of her teeth, her beautiful eyes searching for his as the waves hit her, rock her, leave her moaning and writhing.

He falls back over her body, lowers his mouth to hers, so _fucking_ overwhelmed, kisses her through her moans, pushes into her again and again, feels the pleasure coil further, deeper until, “Hillary, Hillary, Hillary, baby,” he moans her name over and over, “Come for me, love, come for me,” she whispers back, and now her mouth is on his ear, her tongue is tracing his earlobe. “Look at me baby,” she says, and he does, and he presses into her again and finds his release, gasping, open mouth, hooded eyes on her, only her, everything just for her.

He draws himself from her after a few moments, shifting to lie at her side, and pulls her body to onto his chest, whispering his love into her ear and hair and against her neck. “I love you, I love you, you are everything to me,” and it’s the truth.

 

* * *

 

_What does a woman in your position dream about - the president’s wife?_

In 1998, as the summer turned into fall, the dreams came on like a flood of white blood cells, memories careening one after the other in her mind, fighting the pain like the virus it was.

In her dreams, he holds her.

_You always come back to me._

 

* * *

 

 


	6. Loss

_Every fear_  
_every nightmare_  
_anyone has ever had._

 

* * *

 

_December 19th, 1998._

 

As winter descended on Washington, the House of Representatives impeached Bill Clinton.

 

* * *

 

It would be oversimplification to suggest that they remained a couple as a result of their attackers forcing them into a corner - that they were glued together by the mere fact of their being beleaguered. A more nuanced view could suggest that they saw the endless siege against them as a battle that they were destined to face together. That, in such an environment, they were required to cast aside the personal wrongdoings between them in order to march forward in the face of those who fought against the capital-g “Greater Good”, of which they were the standard bearers.

This, too, is an oversimplification. It suggests that destiny - that an outside force - is what drove them together.

It misses the humanity at the core of it.

It misses the bare truth that some things do not happen within any reasonable, logical framework - that, for those fortunate (or, perhaps, unfortunate) enough to experience it, there exists a _must_ , a driving need, to be together. It’s not about the casting-aside of wrongdoings, nor the capital-g-greater-good-ness - it’s that two people can become, in spite of everything, absolutely, deeply, utterly essential to each other. That you can fail someone, or be failed by someone, and still breathe every day because of them.

“Impeachment saved our marriage,” Hillary would joke later, among close friends.

It wasn’t true, really, but it was darkly funny and it offered some explanation for her decision to those who would never, or could never, really understand. And for a woman with so many of her own accomplishments, there remained a seed of resistance to admitting that this broken man was, in many ways, an animating force for her.

She would learn, in time, that _I need him_ is not the same as _I am not enough without him_.

 

* * *

 

“My God, you’re thin,” said Bill, startled. He hadn’t seen Hillary in months.

She had been in Washington for the summer working on the Nixon impeachment case while Bill was running for Congress down in Arkansas. He had been offered a spot on the inquiry team in January, but had turned it down in favour of campaigning to unseat Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt only six months after returning to his home state from Yale. “What has John been doing to you?”

He was only half-joking. The impeachment staff were working under the guidance of Chief Counsel John Doar, and Bill knew by the late hours at which Hillary would finally call him each night that he was pushing them to their maximum. He also knew that, while exhausted, Hillary was thriving. He was awed by her grit and doggedness, and they would stay up chatting late into the night, even when she had to be back up again early the next morning.

Hillary laughed at the blunt greeting.

“Huh, well, nice to see you too, I suppose.” 

He reached out and pulled her to his chest, planting a kiss on the top of her head. She felt so small in his arms.

“I missed you,” he said into her hair.

“I missed you, too.”

“Have you eaten yet?”  It was past 11PM, and Bill had been staked out in front of the Congressional Hotel on Capitol Hill in a borrowed car waiting for her.

“No, not since this morning,” she answered. He clucked disapprovingly at her. They both had a tendency to forget about food, especially in the heat of a campaign or amidst a heavy workload, and Hillary even more so than himself. Beyond that, she was a terrible cook, and it was clear from her small frame that she had been fueling herself on coffee these days. He clasped her hand as he walked her to the car, and she leaned on his shoulder as they crossed the street.

They settled side by side on stools at the counter of a 24 hour diner, ordering Cokes and burgers and cherry pie. Hillary said nothing at first, eating as though she hadn’t in weeks - aside from yogurt and toast, she really hadn’t. Bill watched her, amused.

“This is why you need to live with me down in Arkansas,” he said, teasing. “You’ll never go hungry in Arkansas.” He started on a tale of the gastric experiences of one summer county fair or another that he had visited while campaigning this summer. He had won the primaries in June, and was preparing to face off against Hammerschmidt in November, shoring up votes and support by attending all manner of rallies, fundraisers and pie suppers.

“...And you should have _seen_ the size of the first place watermelon! You’d have never seen a bigger one in your life, I’ll tell you right now,” he finished, puffing up with all the pride in the world. Hillary listened as she ate. She always enjoyed his stories about Arkansas. She could feel the passion emanate from him when he talked about home, and it energized her.

“How’s Virginia?” she asked, pulling the slice of pie towards her. Bill winced.

It had been two years since Bill had introduced his mother to his girlfriend. She had been bewildered by the girl - her long hippie hair with the homemade haircut, her jeans and work shirts and bare feet, her bold voice and Yankee ideas. And _those glasses_ , Christ Almighty. She had told Bill as much. This was _not_ the type of woman Virginia Cassidy Blythe Clinton Dwire Kelley wanted for her son, no ma’am. Hillary smelled her disapproval. She played it off as well as she could, but it was clear that she was hurt by it.

“She’s doing well…” he let the sentence hang for a moment. “She’ll come around, Hill.” He reached his arm around her and rubbed her shoulder. She shrugged, poking at the pie with her fork.

He changed tack. “How have you been? Tell me everything.”

She took him up on the offer, allowing him to somewhat gracefully pivot the conversation, and spent the next hour rambling about everything she was allowed to; the impeachment staff were expected to be tight-lipped, and she respected that. He marvelled at her as she spoke. He was always impressed by her eloquence, her sharp mind, and her ability to organize and communicate thoughts and ideas. _I think we’ve elected the wrong Clinton_ , a state representative would later proclaim when Hillary defended her education reforms in front of Arkansas legislature.

It was past midnight when they rolled into the parking lot of the hotel where Bill had rented a room for the night. Hillary was staying with Sara Ehrman, who had generously provided her room and board while she worked on the impeachment in Washington. But Bill wanted her to himself tonight. She shuffled in past him as he held the door open and dramatically threw herself onto the bed face down. He laughed, shifting his bag off of his shoulder onto the floor.

“You can’t sleep like that, Miss Rodham,” he said, walking past her collapsed figure and poking his head into the bathroom. “Come here.” She groaned as she pulled herself up off the bed and shuffled over to him with her eyes half-closed.

“I come all the way here to Washington,” he said in mock-outrage, “and you fall asleep standing up? I am _appalled_ at your Yankee manners, Miss Rodham.” He brought out the full force of his Arkansas accent, pitching up his voice to mimic his mother. Hillary’s eyes flew open and she threw her head back, releasing a full belly laugh. Bill adored the sound. He lived for that laugh.

“Ma’ gawd, she has awoken,” he said, and she laughed harder, somewhere between genuine mirth and absolute exhaustion. “Come here, honey. Let’s clean you up and put you to bed.”

She stood quietly as he undressed her, gently pulling off each article of clothing before taking off his own. After they were both naked, he wrapped his arms around her and held her,  enjoying the feeling of skin on skin after so long apart. After a few moments he led her into the shower and helped her step over the sill. It was a gesture he would continue throughout their life together - her hand clasped in his, gently guiding her down stairs, or out of cars, or over thresholds. He tried, in the best ways he knew how, to take care of her.

He stroked his hands over her skin as the hot water ran over their bodies. She responded in kind, her forehead resting on his chest, her eyes closed.

After, he gently towelled her off and guided her to bed, slipping in behind her and moulding himself to her curled up body. His fingers tenderly mapped her soft skin as she drifted off in his arms.

Every visit like this was a blessing and a curse, reminding him of how much he missed her when he would return to Arkansas. He would leave her side feeling replenished, but starkly aware of what exactly he lacked without her. As much as his tone was teasing when he prodded her about living with him in Arkansas, at the deepest and most vulnerable level it wasn’t a joke to him. He _needed_ her. The thought terrified and enthralled him. It had pushed him to find ways of proving to himself that it wasn’t really the case - and to, perhaps, prove to her that she most definitely did not need him. He had hurt her in the process, and he would continue to do so.

He tongued a sore spot as he thought about the way she had looked at him when he asked her to marry him last spring. And her response: “No, not now.” He didn’t blame her. He looked at her curled up in his arms - that future Clinton, the _better_ Clinton, maybe - not knowing where his life would lead, but knowing that if she were in it, it would mean her opportunities would be dimmer. He hated himself for wanting it. It felt like plucking the wings off of a lightning bug.

Bill nestled his nose into her damp hair and closed his eyes.

 

* * *

 

On August 15th, 1998, on the same day as Bill’s confession to his wife, 500 pounds of explosives were detonated in a busy shopping area in Omagh, Northern Ireland. It resulted in the death of 29 people, including six children and a pregnant woman. Even facing betrayal, self-doubt and humiliation, Hillary knew her suffering paled in comparison.

She and Bill had travelled to Omagh two weeks after the explosion. Despite a keen awareness of the depths of suffering humanity was capable of bestowing upon each other, Hillary was shaken by the tragedy. During the trip she felt painfully aware of both her smallness as an individual and the enormous responsibility she carried in the role of the First Lady. She felt connected to the fragility and vulnerability of her own human-ness - the sheer weakness of it. They visited the site of the explosion and met survivors, and the husbands and wives and children of those who were killed. They walked through streets crowded on all sides with people trying to catch a glimpse of the President and First Lady, their hands reaching out for a wave or handshake, palms up, as if begging the Heavens for salvation.

Hillary woke in the early hours of December 20th, the morning after the impeachment, in a cold sweat, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her dreams had been dark - an explosion, screaming, a child crying out with arms outstretched. Choking dust and blood and limbs. She took a moment to steady herself, reminded herself where she was, disturbed and shaken by the images her mind had conjured. She lowered herself back to the mattress and curled up on her side, looking across the empty bed. It had been four months, but she would still reach across with seeking hands in the night, forgetting and then remembering again and again that she was alone.

Tonight, she rose from her lonely bed and crept through the dark room to the door, and padded down the hallway to the room where her husband slept.

Bill was asleep on the couch. A lamp on the table next to his head was still on, casting a dim golden glow over his form. He was still wearing his clothes from the day - slacks, a buttoned up shirt. His tie and jacket had been cast to the floor, and a book was open on his chest; he had fallen asleep reading.

Hillary studied him from the doorway. He looked innocent as a child.

She stepped towards him and gently lifted the book from his chest, setting it on the nearby table. She reached out a hand, hesitating for a moment, and gently brushed the back of her fingers over his cheek. He had aged over the past four months. She could see in the lamplight that the fine wrinkles at the corners of his eyes had deepened, and even in sleep his face was drawn. He seemed thinner, the bones of his face sharper. She brushed the pad of her thumb over his eyebrows and across his cheekbone, initiating a genuine touch for the first time in months. She felt safe, cloistered in the privacy of this room, to do so.

A blanket was piled on the end of the sofa, and she lifted it gently up and over her husband’s sleeping figure. She watched his chest rise and fall. The same man who had held her and hurt her. Who had made a beautiful child with her, who she had watched cradle their infant daughter in his big, gentle hands. She looked at him and tried to comprehend how one man could be so many things to her at once. Since August, she had shut him out of her heart and avoided allowing his suffering anywhere near her. It had repulsed her - the gall of it. Now, she leaned in to press a soft kiss to his forehead, and opened herself up to him again - gently, quietly, on her own terms. She felt his pain in the lines on his face, the knit of his brow in sleep, the rumpled shirt. She reached over and flipped off the lamp, enveloping the pair in darkness.

Then she knelt on the carpet next to her sleeping husband, curled upon the floor, and slept.

 

 

> _Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness._
> 
> _It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage._
> 
> _Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying:_
> 
> _“You are accepted. You are accepted."_
> 
> **\- Paul Tillich**

 

* * *

 


	7. Accountability

_You go to the bathroom to apply your mother's lipstick. Somewhere no one can find you._

_You must wear it like she wears disappointment on her face. Your mother is a woman and women like her cannot be contained. Mother dearest, let me inherit the earth. Teach me how to make him beg. Let me make up for the years he made you wait. Did he bend your reflection? Did he make you forget your own name? Did he convince you he was a god? Did you get on your knees daily? Do his eyes close like doors? Are you a slave to the back of his head?_

_Am I talking about your husband or your father?_

 

* * *

 

_Summer 1981_

 

Stubborn and proud as she was, she had learned to adapt. To bend.

She had adapted to the stifling heat and humidity of an Arkansas summer - her position at the law firm meant facing the reality of blouses and coats and pantyhose every day, the moisture captured in patterns on the silk of a camisole removed in the evenings. Over time, through a micro-evolution, perhaps through sheer force of will, she became unaffected by the temperature. People would later marvel at her ability to handle hot weather and glaring studio lights - in the scorch of the Middle Eastern sun she would not wilt, not even a drip of sweat on her lip, while everyone else soaked through at the armpits. She would always master her surroundings - and when she couldn’t, she would adapt herself to them.

She peeled herself from the leather seat of the Oldsmobile and stepped out into the humid Saturday dusk. It felt like breathing underwater, the air honeysuckle-sweet and wet and stifling. She hauled her briefcase from the passenger seat out with her, crammed with files and documents that still needed to be reviewed that evening, and slammed the car door with a bump from her hip. Sunlight filtered through the trees lining the quiet suburban street, dappling the driveway in dancing shadows. As she walked up the pathway to the front porch, she thought of Illinois summers spent on sun-dappled lawns as a girl, spinning in circles on the grass, imagining herself being watched by cameras. How apt, how naive.

The house was quiet when she entered. She dropped her keys in a basket on a small table in the foyer and fingered through the pile of mail. (In later years, she would recall this period as a very brief return to “normalcy” - a home where she or her husband would collect mail from the small box out front, where they paid the electrical bill, where they would make weekly trips to the grocery story with scrawled lists. Normal. Blissfully normal. But she, like her husband, would begin to yearn for more.)

They had moved to a quiet street in the Hillcrest neighbourhood of Little Rock after Bill’s defeat in the election the previous fall. The first months in the home had been dark ones. Bill sank into a deep depression which lingered through the winter, spending long nights lying awake on the floor in the study parsing through every mis-step and mistake. Chelsea was less than a year old, and often inconsolable. Hillary would sit with her, rocking and bouncing her gently, talking to her: “I’ve never been a mom before, and you’ve never been a baby before, so we just have to figure out how to do this together”. She adored being a mother, but felt at times hopelessly inadequate - unable to console a sobbing child, and a devastated husband.

She remembered a moment that had snapped Bill out of his stupor in the spring. She was sitting on the rug in the living room, holding Chelsea by her chubby little lands. She released them and Chelsea had stood teetering for a moment, and then took one step forward, then another.

“Bill! Bill, come in here!” She shouted. “Bill, she’s walking!” He had burst into the living room, wide-eyed, and watched as his baby girl did what he was struggling to do - move forward.

Hillary set her briefcase in the hallway, slipped off her shoes, and wandered through the house to the kitchen, where the door to the backyard stood ajar. She hesitated for a moment at the threshold and looked out.

Bill, lying flat on his back, held a giggling Chelsea above him. He lifted her up and down, smooching her face each time he brought her to him. Hillary felt her heart fill to bursting. For all of his faults, Bill was a wonderful father - sweet and playful and silly. He absolutely adored their daughter.

She stepped out of the doorway and tiptoed down the few steps to the grass in her stockinged feet. Bill caught sight of her first, followed by Chelsea, who let out a squeal of delight.

“Mama!”

Bill sat up and set Chelsea on her feet.

Hillary knelt in the grass and flung her arms out to catch her daughter, who stumbled across the lawn shrieking with joy. Her little cotton dress fanned out behind her, her legs kicking with all of their might to propel her towards her mother. Her bare feet made no sound on the soft green grass. Hillary gathered her up in her arms and sunk her nose into her soft, pale curls, kissing her head.

“Mama, mama, mama,” Chelsea gabbed happily.

“What am I, chopped liver?” Bill joked, crawling over to the pair. He kissed Chelsea, and then his wife. His girls.

He was working at a local Little Rock law firm, Wright, Lindsey & Jennings, but the work didn’t fulfill or sustain him. Outside of work hours, he was embarking on an unofficial campaign, sussing out what exactly went wrong in his first term as governor, figuring out what he should have done differently - or rather, what he _would_ do differently, when he had the chance. While he loved the time he was able to spend with his daughter and wife, he had politics boiling in the blood. He yearned for it. And he was still smarting from his loss.

As the summer swam by into fall and then into winter, he planned his comeback.

 

* * *

 

Hillary slicked her lips with lipstick and ran a comb through her hair; she had grown out her permanent and had gone to a local woman in Little Rock to have her hair styled and lightened. It shone like burnished gold as she stroked the comb through it.

Chelsea had cried when Hillary had returned home from the hairdresser, her hair blown out and smoothed to her shoulders. She had wrapped herself around her mom’s legs in greeting, but when Hillary lifted her into her arms, Chelsea didn’t recognize her. She had had to talk to Chelsea, consoling her and reassuring her, until she finally recognized her voice and realized that Hillary was, indeed, still her mother.

Hillary looked back at her reflection. She, like Chelsea, did not recognize herself anymore. She had done away with her glasses, too, making every effort and concession she could to conform and adapt to what was expected of her in Arkansas as a politician's wife. Physically, anyways.

She had also lost weight - the men at the law firm joked that she would eat only a lettuce leaf for lunch. They weren’t far off. She turned to the side, stucked in her stomach, and smoothed the belted dress she wore over her concave belly. She had ended up taking in her heirloom wedding band to be resized at a local jeweler, as it kept slipping off her slender finger.

She kept telling herself that the changes didn’t matter. They were all just silly, vain things anyways. She was still a lawyer in her own right. She was still a mother, she still chaired board meetings for the Children’s Defense Fund up in Washington. She was still Bill’s wife. Nothing about her life or her accomplishments had changed - just her shell. _It wasn’t a big deal._

Besides, Virginia was thrilled.

"My God, it's like I got a new wife," Bill had joked when he saw her. Hillary had flinched. It hit a raw nerve.

Bill never asked for it himself, but she had seen the cards on the table when the results rolled in last November. Was his loss entirely her fault? No - certainly not. The stupidity of the motor vehicle tax fiasco didn’t help. Nor did the mess at Fort Chaffee. But perhaps the voters would have been more forgiving had there not been whispers and scrutiny directed at the First Lady. The steady drip-drip-drip of criticism had been corrosive, burning away bit by bit at their goodwill. Folks had been outraged in particular by Chelsea’s birth announcement in the papers - “Father Bill _Clinton_ and Mother Hillary _Rodham_ ”. That’s why Vernon was on his way to their home this morning.

“Have me over for breakfast,” he had said. “I have some advice for you. And I expect grits - this is the South!” As if she needed reminding.

Vernon Jordan was a lawyer, a civil rights activist, and a close friend to Bill. Sitting in their kitchen that winter morning, two months away from Bill’s announcement that he would be running for governor - again - in the ‘82 election, he told her what Bill hadn’t.

“You have to take his last name, Hillary.”

She spooned instant grits onto his plate.

“I know.”

He was taken aback by her response. He had come expecting a fight.

“Is that all the advice you’ve brought with you, Vernon?” She asked. “That I’ve got to change my last name?”

He had been surprised, too, by her appearance when she greeted him at the door with that lipstick and blonde hair, that demure dress, her blue eyes unhindered by glasses. She was not the Hillary Rodham he had known the last time he saw her. Until she opened her mouth.

She refilled his cup with coffee and sat across from him at the kitchen table.

“I’m not a fool,” she said, cradling her own mug in her hands. “I know what I should do. But I’m worried. What if it’s still not enough? Right now, I still feel like myself. I don’t _look_ like myself, but I feel, inside, that I am who I am. But when I change my name… I know I need to do it, I will do it… Will it really, truly, ever be enough? And if I’m making decision to be less like who I _think_ I am, will that come back to bite me, Vernon? Will people not know who I am anymore? Will they think that _I_ don’t know who I am? Will that matter?” She was rambling now. Something she didn’t usually do. “What do I need to do - do I need to lie down on the steps of the Capitol and let Bill put his foot on my neck? Will that put an end to it? Is it not enough to just be his wife?”

Vernon reached out and touched her hand.

“You’re still going to be you, Hillary. Whatever happens.”

She looked up at him.

“Am I?”

 

* * *

 

She called her mother the night before the announcement, expressing doubts.

“This is the right decision, Hillary. You need to do this.”

She would state for everyone tomorrow that she would, from that day forward and onward to the end of time, be known, once and for all, as Hillary Rodham _Clinton._

Unlike Virginia, her mother hadn’t cried when she announced before her wedding that she would be keeping her maiden name. But that didn’t mean Dorothy had been happy about the decision.

“This is foolish,” she had said at the time. “This will do more harm than good.”

Hillary had tried to explain that it was about conflict of interest concerns more than simply a feminist stance. Besides, she wanted to be evaluated on her own merits, under her own name. It would kill her for people to assume that any accomplishments or achievements of her own were due to her last name (Oh - and would they ever). Dorothy had always supported her daughter, allowing more of her than her father would. But on this, she didn’t budge.

“Do this for Bill, honey. It’s just a name.”

Hillary twisted the phone cord around her finger. _It’s just a name._

 _It was also just your political beliefs,_ she thought to herself, but then clamped down on her bitterness.

“You’re right. Just a name.”

Her mother had been a long-time Democrat, but only secretly. Hugh Rodham was a solid red Republican if there ever was one, stifling any conversation at the dinner table to the contrary, and Hillary had grown up believing that that was the only way to be, until she was on her own at Wellesley. “I matured,” she would later state about her political transformation. “I grew up.” She didn’t blame her mother for trying to keep the peace at home by keeping her beliefs hidden, but it gnawed at something in Hillary - the tamping down on the authentic self for the benefit of one’s husband.

Was it the same if the decision was a logical one? Was it the same if Bill didn’t ask her to make the change, or intimidate her into it - but rather, if she did it of her own volition, to conform with the public’s expectations for her? Her name, that fragment of her independent identity that she had been clinging to, would be gone.

Ultimately, she knew she could accept that.

Her time with her daughter, however, would be the more difficult sacrifice to swallow. Hillary and Bill would make a family trip out of his re-election campaign, touring the state together. But long days and late night rallies would often mean Chelsea would be left in the care of a minder, a friend, or Bill’s mother.

“Where’s mama? I want mama,” Chelsea would say to the sitter. She would be taught to answer her own question. “Mama make ‘peech,” she would declare, more to herself than anyone else.

The next day, Hillary announced that she would be taking her husbands surname as her own.

Later, when she passed by her reflection, she saw her mother looking back.

_History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme._

 

* * *

 


	8. Reformation

_He bathes me until I forget their names and faces. I ask him to look me in the eye when I come home. Why do you deny yourself heaven? Why do you consider yourself undeserving? Why are you afraid of love? You think it's not possible for someone like you._

_But you are the love of my life._  
_You are the love of my life._  
_You are the love of my life._

 

* * *

 

 

_December 20th, 1998_

 

Bill opened his eyes.

He was surprised to find himself covered in a blanket. He pushed it down, lifted a hand to his face to rub his eyes. He sat up, his back screaming in protest. It took a few moments for him to register his wife on the rug next to him, curled up on her side like a cat, fast asleep. He blinked a few times, unsure if he was dreaming, or if he had imaged her in a fit of yearning.

Was she really there? Had she come to him while he slept?

She hadn’t been the first. Bill didn’t admit it, but there were a number of nights when he had knelt by her sleeping form in the middle of the night, just to hear her breathe.

The sight of her next to him hit like a bolt of lightning. _She’s really there_. She looked so peaceful - her cheek resting on her folded hands, her knees tucked close, the gentle rise and fall of her chest. He noticed she was wearing the robe he had bought for her years ago, pale purple silk tied at her waist. He was loathe to wake her, but the floor was no place for his wife.

He reached down, tempted to brush her cheek and hair with his fingers, but hesitated, recalling how she still recoiled from his touch.

“Hillary, honey,” he whispered, instead reaching down to softly stroke her arm. “Honey, wake up."

Her eyes fluttered and then opened. She turned her face to look up at him. He was struck, as he had been so many times before, by how beautiful she was.

“Oh…” She looked around and blinked, realizing where she was. “I had a nightmare. I didn’t want to be alone.” She sat up with a quiet groan and stretched her arms up over her head. “We’re not young anymore, are we?”

He laughed quietly. “If the way my muscles feel after sleeping on this couch are any indication... no.”

“You deserve it,” she said dryly. He frowned. He did. He deserved all of it, and more. 

She looked up at him, registering his frown. Her expression softened. She reached a hand out to him and rested it on his knee. “Help me up.”

He stood, held out his hand and pulled her to her feet. She stretched up onto her toes to bring her mouth up to his ear and whispered to him.

“Come with me.”

He clasped her hand as she led him back to their bedroom, through the dressing room and into the bathroom. She reached in to turn on the shower and turned back to Bill.

“I need you near me for a while, okay?” She said it quietly. He watched her, his mouth dry. He needed it, too, more than anything in the world. She held his gaze with hers as she loosened the sash at her waist and shrugged off the robe, and then the negligee beneath. She stepped out of the silk at her feet and reached to unbutton Bill’s shirt. Memories flooded his mind. He could hardly breathe.

He felt vulnerable as she pulled each piece of clothing from his body. When she stood again before him, he averted his eyes. He felt a wave of shame being near her like this, knowing what he had done in the walls of this home.

“Look at me, Bill.”

He turned his eyes to hers. _“Please.”_

He did as she asked. He lowered his gaze to trace the graceful line of her neck, the spread of her collarbones to delicate shoulders, her soft, pale hair gently brushing the skin there. He looked down over her breasts, the parting of her ribcage and the gathering of her waist, the curve of her wide hips. He swallowed.

She turned and stepped into the shower and beckoned him to follow her. He could hardly remember how to walk.

She stood under the stream of hot water, eyes closed, her hair darkening, slicking to her scalp and shoulders. He watched the water cascade over her. He had seen her like this before countless times, but this morning it felt like the first time. When she opened her eyes, droplets of water clung to her lashes. He wanted to kiss them. He waited.

She moved first, grasped his hands and lifted them to chest level, twisting her fingers with his. She brought one of his hands to her mouth and kissed his knuckle gently, looking at him with those blue eyes.

Nothing, not a single thing in this entire world, was better than that moment. He thought his knees would give out.

She pulled the other hand to her face and released his fingers, pressing his hands to her cheeks.

He cradled her face gently in his palms. He felt like he held the entire universe right there.

“I can’t do this again, Bill. I really can’t. This has to be the last time.”

“I know, baby.”

“I don’t think I could survive it.”

“I promise…”

“You’ve promised me before.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think we can do it alone. I think we need help.”

Bill nodded.

She looked up at him. He didn’t move - just held her face, upturned. Tears flowed freely over her cheeks, collecting in his palms. All that salt water.

They stood like that for a while, neither sure how long, neither keeping track. He looked at her, just looked and looked, his long fingers cradling her. He swiped his thumbs along the downy-soft skin of her cheeks, brushing her tears.

Suddenly she whispered to him, so quiet he had to lean close to hear.

“Why couldn’t you have just loved me better?”

 

* * *

 

Hillary dug her fingernails into her palm so hard she drew blood. The next morning, she would find four red half-moon crescents perfectly etched into the skin.

“I could go to bed with a man up here, you know,” she said through clenched teeth. She tried to keep her voice low. The phone was shaking in her hand.

She was in the room at Sara Ehrman’s house in Washington. It was past midnight. She had been pacing her room for the last hour, calling and calling down to Arkansas trying to get a hold of Bill. When he hadn’t answered at home, she called the campaign office. When no one answered there, she had called Paul Fray, Bill’s campaign deputy.

“Paul.. Hi Paul, it’s Hillary. I’m sorry it’s so late,” she had felt a wave of embarrassment when he answered, clearly woken from sleep. “It’s Bill, Paul… I’m worried. I haven’t heard from him in days.”

She and Bill spoke most nights after she would get home from the impeachment inquiry. She would lie on her unmade bed and tell him about her day, give him advice on the ongoing campaign, and tell him what she was - or was not - wearing. He had stopped answering her calls last week. Betsey had re-assured her, when she managed to get through at the campaign offices, that Bill was just out and about meeting people. Hillary accepted the answer. For a few days.

“Paul, what’s going on?” It took some wheedling before he would finally fess up. Bill had a girl he was seeing down in Arkansas - she was from the University and had been volunteering on the campaign. _The first time._  Hillary took the news like a punch to the gut, left winded and gasping. Paul promised to go find Bill, bring him back to his house, and have him give her a call.

When she had hung up the phone, she collapsed to the floor.

Bill called thirty minutes after. He was sheepish and apologetic.

“Bill, what the fuck is going on?”

“It’s nothing, Hillary. We just had a few drinks. She’s been working hard on the campaign and wanted some advice.”

“That’s bullshit, Bill.” It _was_ bullshit. Paul had told her enough to know it was. “So, should I go find someone to fuck tonight, or tomorrow?”

There was few moments of silence on the other end of the line. Then, the sound of Bill weeping.

“Please… please don’t do that. Don’t go and do something that would make life miserable.”

She wanted to smash the phone against the wall.

“For who - for you?” She was having trouble moderating her voice. She clenched her jaw for a moment, inhaled sharply through her nose. “Because, let me tell you Bill, things are pretty fucking miserable for me right now already.”

They ended up talking until dawn. Bill apologized over and over. And she chose to forgive him.

When she shuffled into the kitchen next morning, Sara gave her a once over.

“Long night?”

Hillary nodded, filling a cup with coffee.

“You know what you’re getting yourself into with him?”

“I have no idea.”

 

* * *

 

They had finished another counselling session.

It had been a month, now, of weekly eight hour couples’ counselling sessions, and Bill was also regularly attending therapy alone. They had spent hours together dissecting scenes from their childhoods - Bill’s, in particular - discussing how his difficult upbringing had deeply affected him as an adult: his desire to please, at times dishonestly; his charm; his reliance on strong women; his addictive and self-destructive behaviors.

While Hillary found the sessions beneficial and insightful, they didn’t answer the question which, for so long, she hadn’t been brave enough to truly ask.

On a January afternoon, after the counselor left, they sat together in the second floor residences at the White House, and Hillary decided that it was time.

“I made my choices. I did. And I admit that I have been bitter, at times, about those choices - I can admit that now. But I made them willingly, even if they were not the ones I wanted to have to make in the first place. To change my appearance. To take your name. To forgive you, and stay with you. I chose to stay, over and over again. I _chose_ to stay. I take responsibility for that. There were a million and one reasons for me to stay - more reasons to stay than there were other women - and so, on the balance, I made the choice to be with you. And to this day, I feel that I made the right decision. I mean - look where we are right now, Bill! We’re in the White House, for Christ’s sake. Look at what we’re capable of! But you made it so Goddamn difficult. And I want to know _why_.”

She looked over at him.

“So educate me.” She continued. “Ultimately, you made choices, same as I did. All of the psychoanalysis in the world won’t help me to understand why you did what you did. Why, in the heat of those moments, you betrayed me. Repeatedly. Consciously. Knowing the consequences.” She wasn’t angry anymore. She was curious.

Bill paused for a moment. He would be honest with her, this time. He owed her that.

“You’re better than me, Hillary,” he said, twisting the wedding band on his ring finger. It wasn’t pandering. He wasn’t patronizing her. It was the naked truth - one that many others had stated in the past. “And I needed you. I _need_ you. I know it now and it knew it then. Every single accomplishment I had in my political life was because of you being right there with me. When I lost in my first run for Congress, you told me to go for Attorney General, and I did, and I won. And then, when I went for governor, I wouldn’t have won without your intervention in the campaign, your organization. I couldn’t have picked myself up after my defeat without you pulling me along. And then I watched you change yourself. I dragged you down to Arkansas, only to have them all pressure you into being someone else. You never had to do that, but you did.” He said it with years of pent up regret in his voice.

“You were at the heart of the biggest accomplishments in my administration, and when you failed, it was because I didn’t do enough. I wouldn’t be sitting here, in this building, without you...” - he paused, his voice wavered with emotion - “defending me, and my failures, in front of the nation, over and over again. I was nothing without you. I saw that, clear as day, from the moment you came into my life. I knew everything that you were capable of on your own, but I wanted you for myself. And then when I had you, I hated myself for it. I waited every day for you to realize what a mistake you had made and to walk out the door and leave me alone. And I had to know that if you ever left me, as you should have long ago, that I would be able to find someone else. That when you finally got out of there, and went off to be the governor or a senator, or the president in your own right, that I would be able to salvage something by myself.”

When he finished, he looked up at her. That was it. That was really it. There was no charm, no narrative to be spun. Just the raw truth.

Hillary was silent. She weighed his words, parsed them, let them settle.

Finally she spoke.

“That,” she said, staring him right in the eye, “is the stupidest thing I have ever heard in my life.”

There was silence for a moment as he took in what she said.

Then suddenly, she erupted with laughter, doubled over. Bill was caught up, too, and at once they were leaned over each other, overcome. They hadn’t laughed together like this in months, and it felt so damn good.

“Bill, you idiot.”

They laughed and laughed until their stomachs hurt and tears - tears of pain, and joy, and release - streamed down their faces. Their history was what it was - absurd, ridiculous, exciting, excruciating. And all they could do was laugh.

Hillary collected herself for a moment and rubbed her jaw.

“I can’t laugh anymore,” she groaned.

“Huh, not the first time I’ve made your jaw hurt,” he quipped with a smirk. She let out a shriek and swatted his chest.

“A joke about blow jobs, from _you_?” she said, in mock outrage. “That’s a bold move, William.”

They cracked up again, collapsing together. They knew they would be together, in spite of (or maybe because of) each of their flaws so clearly laid out before the other. Each painful memory, each wrongdoing. They embraced it - the thirty-odd years of history, the good and the bad - and they laughed. It was all they could do.

“Bill,” she said, taking a deep breath to calm herself. She shifted herself over on the couch until her thigh pressed up against his. The contact sent a jolt through her. “I chose you. Willingly. And today, I still choose you. You’re not going to get rid of me, okay?”

“I will do everything I possibly can to make this up to you. For the rest of my life.”

“Just… love me, okay?”

Bill reached out and wrapped his arm around her, pulling her to his chest. He pressed a firm kiss into her hair. They sat together like that for a while, lingering in each others’ presence, holding each other up as they always had.

Hillary felt something clicking in her brain. She walked up and down the halls of that house in her mind. Empty halls, empty rooms. She tapped on a few doors to be sure, but there was no one left. She pressed her hand flat against a wall and with a firm push, it collapsed into dust.

 

* * *

 

 

Only a few people knew that Bill had a knack for making pancakes.

He led Hillary through the dining room and into the kitchen on the second floor of the family quarters. It was late - the kitchen staff had left, and they were blissfully alone.

He put his hands on her waist and lifted her up onto the counter.

He started hunting down ingredients - eggs from the fridge, milk. He opened nearly a dozen cupboards before finding the sugar and flour. Hillary was of little help. Neither of them cooked while in the White House. Or outside of it, really.

“Now, it’s your turn,” he said, cracking an egg into a bowl he had (finally) found.

“My turn to do what?” She lifted a cup of tea to her lips. It had taken them nearly twenty minutes to hunt down the teapot.

“To answer the question.” He whisked the ingredients in the bowl, and turned to light the flame on the range. “Why in God’s name did you make the choices you did? Really - _the_ choice.” He paused, watching the pan heat up. “Why did you stay?”

She answered immediately.

“You were the only person who wasn’t afraid of me.”

He looked over at her and knit his eyebrows.

“Do you remember coming to stay with my family down at the cabin on Lake Winola for the first time?” She blew on her tea. His eyes travelled over her lips for a moment, wanting to kiss her. Always.

“Was that the trip when your daddy made me sleep on the porch?” They both laughed. “Oh, I remember.”

“Dad hated all of my boyfriends. Except, somehow, for you.” She smiled. For all of the conflict they had had, she loved her father, and missed him dearly. “And likewise, they all hated him! But not you. You talked to him. You reasoned with him, in a way that I never could. My God, do you remember when he came down to Arkansas for the first time to help you on your campaign? My father, campaigning for a Democrat? Lord help us all.”

Bill scooped the batter and poured it onto the hot pan. It sizzled.

“I remember coming into the cabin one day, watching the two of you sitting at the table as he taught you to play pinochle and I thought, my God. This is an exceptional human being.”

Bill flipped the pancakes, grinning as he recalled the memory.

“I don’t think I won a single game.”

“I saw your heart. The way you could be with people. The kindness and empathy. And I’ve never met anyone who could debate with me the way you could. Who wanted to make change in the world the way I did. Who had the charm to get elected!” She laughed, a self-deprecating smile. “And then we had Chels. And I saw the way you held her. Like she was the center of the universe.”

Bill piled the pancakes on a plate and topped them with maple syrup. He speared them with a knife and fork, cut off a piece of the stack and lifted it to her mouth. He watched her as she chewed.

“Still got it?” He asked. She nodded in approval, swallowing before she continued.

“Through everything, I just knew that you loved me, and that I loved you. And that, in spite of it all, you were deserving of that love. I couldn’t abandon you. When someone you love is hurting, or broken, you don’t just leave. _You help them_.”

He laid down the fork and looked up at her, with all of the awe that he had ever had for her compressed into a single moment. He moved between her legs and leaned in to whisper in her ear.

“Can I kiss you, Mrs. Clinton?”

She nodded.

He brought his hands up to cup her face and pulled her down to him. He brushed his fingertips over her cheeks and jaw, up and over her ears, tucking back her hair. He kissed her forehead first, and then her nose and chin, so gentle. He brushed his lips over hers, inhaling her. Her eyes slipped closed as he pressed a kiss to her mouth. She parted her lips and he could taste her on his tongue, sugary-sweet maple syrup and skin. She tasted like salvation.

After they parted from the kiss, Bill grasped her bottom and pulled her off the counter. She shrieked, wrapping her arms and legs around him, and remembered another time, in another kitchen, almost thirty years ago.

She leaned in close and pressed her mouth to his ear to whisper to him.

“You are the love of my life. _You are the love of my life.”_

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi lovely readers! Thank you all for the thoughtful, often insightful, and extremely motivating comments. I can't say enough how much I appreciate them.
> 
> While I promised daily updates, I'm going to be taking a week off to do some research before moving on to the next chapters. Chapter 9 will be up on Saturday.
> 
> Thank you for reading along so far! <3


	9. Forgiveness

_If we're gonna heal, let it be glorious._ _  
There is a curse that will be broken._

 

* * *

 

_February 12th, 1999_

 

In the fragile cusp between winter and spring, in the midst of the thaw, Hillary held a secret of her own. She cupped it between nervous palms and slowly breathed life into it.

She spread her hands over the map of New York that Harold had laid on the table.

“54,000 square miles full of strangers that need to fall in love with you. Dozens of counties that you’ve never stepped foot in. Nineteen _million_ people. And New Yorkers are a special breed. They’ll probably hate you, at least in the beginning. You need to think very carefully about this.”

Hillary nodded, absorbing his input and studying the materials at hand carefully, as she always did. She had called Harold Ickes, an expert in the New York political landscape, for advice, and he had come bearing a dozen folders full of charts and polling data, maps of districts, and reams of information. He was delightfully candid and direct.

Three months earlier, Senator Patrick Moynihan of New York had taped an interview in which he had stated that he would not be running for a fifth term in the coming election. Within hours, phone calls had been patched through to Hillary’s office from various people at the DNC, suggesting that she should run. A few months later, rumours began to bubble up in earnest after a senator from New Jersey mentioned in an interview with NBC, in response to Rudy Giuliani's highly publicized announcement days earlier, that she would be surely running as his opposition. She hadn’t made any decision at that point, and had called the New Jersey senator to ask where in the _hell_ he got off making those announcements on her behalf. He had apologized sheepishly. 

And it was true - she hadn’t decided whether she would run, not then and not now. She rolled the idea around her in mouth like candy. It was sweet and intoxicating and decidedly strange on her tongue. The First Lady, running for office? _Senator_ Hillary Rodham Clinton?

She already knew the accusations that would come her way, the bitter with the sweet. _Carpetbagger._ It was true, she had never lived in New York. _Riding her husband’s coattails._ Not particularly original. _Relying on her husband’s last name for exposure._ She had to laugh at the irony.

Her closest advisors were counselling against joining the race. _It’ll wear you out, it’s unprecedented, you’re still the First Lady, how can you campaign in New York when you have a job to do in Washington, Lewinsky was only a few months ago, but what about the impeachment?_ She weighed their input carefully.

Some were very direct with her: _You will lose._

She brushed her fingers over the ink and paper of the map - she traced the Adirondacks and the Catskills, pressed a fingertip to the place where New York kissed Canada at Niagara Falls, traced across from Buffalo to Syracuse, from Albany down to New York City. The state looked so small on the table, like she could pick it up in her palms and capture everyone in the clutch of her fingertips. The thought of the campaign made her heart race - days out on the road meeting people, listening to what they had to say, absorbing their challenges and formulating solutions. _Her very own campaign_. The thought sent a jolt of adrenaline through her body - a heady mix of thrill and terror. That fragile cusp.

She thought about Bill.

They were still attending weekly counselling sessions together, and still healing. Since Bill had opened up to her last month, a barrier had fallen between them - one they hadn’t really known existed. Another sweet thawing. They were taking their time with each other; re-laying the foundations of their marriage and learning about each other again. They would talk, not just about politics or the day-to-day, but about themselves, their past and their future. _What’s next? What do you want to do next? Do you remember that? Do you remember when we did that?_ They would stay up reminiscing and laughing together, debating, joking, wondering.

Bill had been careful to give her space. He was sweet, respectful. He would lean in close and ask her if he could kiss her. He would hold her hand or put his arm around her waist tentatively, waiting for her to relax into him. She didn’t recoil from his touch anymore, but he was careful with her.

“I’m going to do it right, this time,” he had whispered to her as they parted ways late in the evening, after a long discussion. They still weren’t sleeping together - Bill had moved off of the couch, and had taken to sleeping in one of the guest rooms on the second floor quarters.

After years of broken promises, of fighting and fucking and forgiving only to fail again, he refused to repeat history. They hadn’t made love since last summer, since before the confession. She needed time. They both did. Her to mend her wounds and regain trust; him, to give his brain a reset. His psychologist recommended he take time to study his sexual impulses, to let them wash over him, to overwhelm him, and to regain control. Hillary wasn’t entirely convinced that a lack of control was at the heart of the issue, though she was familiar with his tendency towards impulsiveness - as a strong believer in accountability, she was acutely aware of the _conscious decisions_ he had made. He had admitted as much in January. There was a freedom in accepting that fact - that it wasn’t an inevitability. That he could choose differently.

That he _would_ choose differently.

But she could see what the celibacy was doing to him - how he would flush when she brushed past him, how he would struggle to focus on her words when she spoke to him. She would lick her lips, rub them together, and watch him fight the impulse to look at her mouth. She admitted to herself that she was teasing him. The rush she felt, remembering her power, and how much her husband desired her, did wonders for her self-esteem. But they were still rebuilding - still in the cusp between their own winter and spring. 

She thought about the impact the campaign would have on them in such a tenuous time. 

She knew the campaign would provide another challenge. New, but familiar. She would be campaigning around New York State, and he would be left alone at the White House. The thought made her swallow hard. She remembered a different time, twenty-five ago, when she had been working in Washington while he was the one campaigning down in Arkansas. She remembered how that story went - the phone call to Paul, the news like a sucker punch, Bill’s apologies until dawn. 

She would need to trust that this time would be different.

“You would be the first woman senator from New York,” Harold said, pulling her out of her reverie.

She nodded. 

“And the first First Lady to be elected as a senator. If you even won.”

“Mhmm.” 

“That’s a lot of firsts. Firsts scare people. It’s another barrier to break.” 

“Oh, I’m familiar with those.” 

“I don’t even know if you would be a good candidate.” 

“Neither do I.”

“And then there’s the name thing…”

She looked up from the map.

“What would you run as? Hillary Clinton, or Rodham? Hillary Rodham Clinton? Bit of a mouthful.”

She thought for a moment.

“Hillary.” She said firmly. “Just Hillary."

 

* * *

 

It ended with little fanfare.

On February 12th, 1999, the same day that Hillary and Harold met to discuss the Senate race, the very same Senate voted against both charges of impeachment against her husband.

Four days later, on February 16th, the office of the First Lady released a statement acknowledging that a run for the Senate was under consideration.

In the days between, she and Bill holed themselves up in her office in the West Wing and talked about their future.

“Anything you want to do, I am for.” He was firm. “You have been fighting at my side for thirty years. Come next year, our life is yours. It’s your time. I owe you that much, at least.” 

She rested her chin in her hands.

“And what are you going to do?”

“Support you. Of course.”

“You’re okay with living in New York?” Harold had reminded her that she would need to be living in New York state by the time of the election in order to run. “You don’t want to go back to Arkansas?”

“Hillary. Christ Almighty. If you think I’m going to drag you back down there, you’re crazy." 

“Are those two thoughts mutually exclusive?”

They laughed together. She did feel a little bit crazy. But a wave of excitement was building inside of her, propelling her forward. She was turning their dynamic on it’s head - they were breaking new ground. 

“The year 2000 will be _The Year of Hillary,_ ” he said, already puffing up his chest with pride. “Millenium-schmillenium. My wife will be a senator from the great state of New York!” 

He started crooning to her from across the room.

“ _These little town blues are melting away,”_ he flashed her a cheeky grin as he sang, making his way towards her. “ _I’m gonna make a brand new start of it in old New York…”_

He stepped around her desk and reached out a hand with a flourish. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet and slung an arm around her waist, guiding her out into the middle of the room.

She threw back her head with a laugh as he spun her around, singing louder now, and not terribly well.

“ _If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere…”_

He spun her once more, pressed his palm to the small of her back, and dipped her low. He held her there, watching her laugh in his arms, full of life and light and joy.

“ _It’s up to you, New York, New York!_ ” 

 

* * *

 

Winter has a habit of clinging on. Year after year it comes and goes, ebbs and flows.

Hillary reached out to hold Diane’s hand, frail as a bird, her skin so cold and dry.

She was in a hospital in Fayetteville. Hillary had taken a week off of the campaign trail to be with her friend, flying out to Arkansas as soon as she heard from Jim Blair that his wife was nearing the end of her battle with cancer.

They sat together, day after day, rehashing memories and retelling jokes. Hillary had brought gifts - a beautiful silk scarf to wrap around her head, and a box of old photos that they thumbed through together. One showed a dashing young Bill Clinton with his arms around the two women; Bill in a deep blue suit looking outrageously handsome, Diane with a sneaky grin, and Hillary in her enormous glasses and paisley button-up. In another, she and Diane sat on a couch with their heads bent towards each other, whispering conspiratorially. There were photos of family dinners, of a chubby baby Chelsea propped up on various knees or cradled in comforting arms, of gatherings at every house they had lived in while in Arkansas.

Hillary had avoided the topic of the Senate race, wanting to spend time in the warm glow of their past rather than her own uncertain future. The campaign seemed like such a small, unimportant thing at the bedside of her dying friend. Diane thought otherwise.

“Don’t let anyone tell you that you won’t win,” she said. “They don’t know what you’re capable of.”

She lifted a trembling hand and pointed at Hillary.

“You’re not the canary in the cage anymore, Hill,” Diane said, her voice strained with effort. She attempted a grin, her eyes glittering with mischief. “You’ve broken free. And if you haven’t yet, you’re about to.” 

Hillary smiled, leaning in close to hear her. Her voice was fierce, but so quiet. 

“We flap our little wings against the bars, hoping someone will hear us,” Hillary whispered, remembering her own words.  

“I think they can hear you now,” Diane responded. They laughed together. 

Diane had been there for Hillary through every heartbreak and every challenge as First Lady - of the United States, and of Arkansas. She had been her cheerleader, her sounding board; the kind of woman who could cut through the bullshit with her. While Hillary never told anyone all of her secrets (or, truly, nearly any of them), Diane was as close to a confidante as anyone ever got, save for Bill. She would send Hillary clippings of commentary on her haircuts from local newspapers, and they would laugh together on the phone as they read through them together. When Diane married her husband Jim in Little Rock, Hillary had been the “best person” at their wedding. Young folks with freckled summer skin and big smiles.

Hillary lifted a photo from the Blair’s wedding out of the box, dated July 1979 - nearly twenty one years ago. Bill, posing in a ridiculous top hat, had officiated. Jim and Diane, the groom and his bride, stood in the center of the photo, and Hillary stood to the bride’s left with a wide smile and a tumble of soft curls, a spray of flowers tucked behind her ear. She mused for a moment that at the time of the photo she was pregnant with Chelsea, her Bermuda tan still lingering on her nose and cheeks.

Diane looked at the photo with a sad smile, and then back to Hillary.

“My time is almost up, Hill.” Her voice softer now, her breathing laboured. 

Hillary inhaled a wavering breath. She remembered other times at hospital bedsides: the long hours late into the nights she spent next to her father, the beeping and whirring of machines, the sour smell, the shuffle of nurses’ feet in orthopedic shoes. Their gentle hands and comforting voices.

“I’m here with you,” Hillary said, looking back at her dear friend. “You’re safe. I’ll be right here by your side.” 

“Oh, no. You need to get back out there and keep fighting. When I wake up in the morning - _if_ I wake up in the morning - I expect you to be on your way back to the campaign. You hear me?” 

“Diane…” 

“ _You hear me?_ ”

Hillary relented. “Alright.” 

Diane closed her eyes, satisfied. Hillary squeezed her hand gently and leaned close to press a kiss to her forehead. As she did, Diane squeezed her hand back, holding her in place.  

“Don’t ever give up on yourself and what you believe in,” she whispered. “Take care of Bill and Chelsea. They need you.” 

Hillary blinked back her tears. “I will, honey. I promise.” 

“And Hillary? Win this election for me. I wish I could be there when you do. I love you.”

“I love you, too. My fellow canary.” 

Hillary pressed another kiss to her friend’s forehead. She smoothed the blanket over her slight frame and stayed by her side until she drifted off to sleep, a frail hand held in her strong one.

 

* * *

 

Hillary took the call in the middle of the night. She had flown back to the White House at Diane’s command, spending a week strategizing with her Hillaryland staff before heading back out on the campaign trail in New York. Despite the ongoing Senate race, she was still the First Lady, and continued to co-ordinate the activity in her Washington office.

The operator patched the call through to the phone in the sitting room. She had been expecting it, but the news hit her hard all the same. It was Jim. Diane had died only hours ago. 

After a few quiet words, Hillary hung up the phone. 

She made her way down the hallway to the room where Bill was sleeping, let herself in, and slipped into bed next to him. She laid by his side in silence. He felt her grief emanate across the space between them, pulling him out of sleep. He opened his eyes and looked at her.  

“Did she go?” 

Hillary nodded. He reached out to her, pulled her to his side of the bed and gathered her up in his arms, stroking his fingers through her hair. 

“She’s going to be so proud of you.” 

In the morning she awoke before Bill, as the dawn broke through the curtains in beams thick and golden as honey. She watched him breathe, so at peace in sleep. Her heart ached at the loss of her friend, but she felt a quiet, lingering comfort knowing that she, too, was now at peace. She felt bolstered by her words, and vowed in her heart that morning to carry forward Diane’s command: _Win this election for me._  

Hillary turned her ear to Bill’s chest and listened to his heart beat. For a moment, she could forget that they were in the White House, and could imagine them back in their little stone house in Fayetteville - the first one, the one Bill had purchased. She could imagine that they were wrapped up together in that wrought iron bed - the only piece of furniture he had bought before bringing her inside, and the only one they had needed that first night - waking up together in the morning sun.

Beginnings and ends, the past and the present, death and life.

How far they had come, and how far they had left to go. 

She felt the frost of winter thaw. Pressing a kiss to his rough cheek, something inside of her was blooming. In her husband’s arms, as the lemonade yellow sunshine illuminated them together on a golden late-Spring morning, she felt herself begin to unfurl.

 

> _“do not choose the lesser life._  
>  _do you hear me._  
>  _do you hear me._  
>  _choose the life that is. yours._  
>  _the life that is seducing your lungs._  
>  _that is dripping down your chin.”_  
>  ― **Nayyirah Waheed**  

 

 

* * *


	10. Resurrection

_So how are we supposed to lead our children to the future?_  
_What do we do? How do we lead them?_  
_Love. L-O-V-E, love._

_You are terrifying... and strange, and beautiful._

_Magic._

 

* * *

 

_Spring, 1971_

 

He couldn’t help himself.

He was captivated by her. The tilt of her head, her upturned chin, her long blonde hair like raw flax over shoulders and arms and back. He would sit in class and wait for her to show up, feeling the bottom of his stomach drop out when she would walk through the door. His eyes would follow her as she crossed the room to take her seat - he was always studying.

He had a bad habit of skipping classes, but this was an exception. Anything to see her.

He fed on her every move, drinking her in. He had memorized the exact angle at which her neck met her shoulder, the soft curve of her cheek, the algebra of her body. Even under loose clothes, he could see the line of her figure; her narrow waist, the shape of her thighs, the curve of breast and spine and hip. Sometimes she would grab her thick hair in a big handful and pull it around in front of one shoulder, leaving the expanse of her back unconcealed. He would watch her shift in her seat, watch the curves of her shoulder blades move under her sweater, the little peaks of her spine at the nape of her neck exposed above her collar. One afternoon, he had watched as she stretched her arms up over her head, her shirt lifting enough to expose the small of her back, just for a moment. Never in his life had he wanted to kiss somewhere on a woman’s body more than in that moment. His mouth watered at the thought.

After class, he would follow close behind her as she left the room, lingering in the cloud of her shampoo and perfume. He was left stunned in her wake as she swept out the door.

He had studied her, had become an expert in how she looked and moved, but he had never talked to her. He had come nearly close enough to touch her - to reach out, tap her shoulder, introduce himself. But he hadn’t given in. _If I start something with her, I won’t be able to stop._

But while he hadn’t spoken to her, he had listened. She was quick to speak up in class, and her voice was clear and confident. She had an incredible ability to speak fully formed and contextualized thoughts seemingly off the cuff, sentences forming into paragraphs forming into arguments and rebuttals. He could see her riffling through her encyclopedic brain, footnoting and earmarking her thoughts as she spoke them. There was no sweetness to her voice, no breathiness, not like he was used to from the girls at home. She was sharp, direct. Very midwestern, very Chicago. People were intimidated by her - her confidence and bluntness and intelligence. Her self-possession.

And he was absolutely fucking fascinated.

On an evening seemingly like any other, in a law library, in a memory he had revisited in his own mind and recited for others countless times, drawn by magnetism or destiny or who knows what, two unstoppable forces collided. There was a magic about her. She was from a time and place all her own. In his memory, the universe stopped all around them as he watched her march the endless length of the library right up to him.

In his memory, she _glowed_.

She stopped directly in front of him - tilted up that confident chin, looked him square in the eye, and planted her hands on her hips. He was struck for a moment by how small she was; the top of her head was only just level with his shoulder.

“Well, if you’re going to keep looking at me,” she started (it was true - he hadn’t taken his eyes off her all evening, or any time she was near him for that matter), “and I’m going to keep looking back” (tonight, finally, she had stared right back at him), “then we ought to know each other’s names. I’m Hillary Rodham.”

She thrust out one hand and smiled. She was in his space, right up in his face. He stared back at her. _Her eyes are so blue._

He hadn’t been this close to her before. He tried to absorb everything, every detail of her face - her wide, clear eyes behind her glasses, the delicate overbite, her dimples. Her dark eyebrows, raised in expectation. She had a sweet smile and plump pink cheeks, but that voice of hers cut right through him. He wondered for a moment what she would look like naked, straddling his hips; what her long hair would feel like dragging across his bare chest. _Fuck._

She was looking up at him, waiting.

“And what’s your name?”

_Shit. Who was he? What is his name?_

“Ah - Bill. Bill Clinton.” _Jesus_. Where did his voice go?

He grasped her outstretched hand in his, so small that his fingers wrapped right around it. He never wanted to let go.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Bill. Don’t be a stranger.”

With that, she turned on her heel and marched right out the door. Bill stared after her, starstruck.

“Who was that?” A classmate next to him, long since forgotten, asked.

Bill answered without hesitation.

“The girl I’m going to marry.”

 

* * *

  

“Not bad, huh?”

“Not bad at all.” Hillary answered.

Bill watched the taped interview after it aired, his chin resting on his hands, elbows on his knees. He was sitting in the living room in the second floor quarters, waiting for his wife to come home to him. She was flying in from New York to Washington to spend the coming week with her West Wing staff.

Hillary had called him in the hours before the interview, needing support and encouragement, advice. She had an admittedly fraught relationship with the press, and was well aware of the impact - for better or worse - that an interview with David Letterman would have on her candidacy, in _New York_ of all places. His show was tactically chosen. Her performance could give her credibility in the senate race - or destroy it. While she trusted that goodwill was intended on behalf of David and his producers, after years of press conferences and interviews that had put her on the defensive, it was almost impossible to imagine one in which she wasn’t being attacked.

The pressure was immense. She was, of course (always and ever after) under the microscope, and on the verge of launching her campaign, no less. But things were different this time. As the interview progressed, Bill watched her bloom in front of him, in front of millions of viewers, on television.

They all tuned in to hear what she had to say - her ideas, her opinions, her thoughts. And not on the topic of her husband  - she wasn’t thrust up there to defend one of his fuck ups, this time. This was all about Hillary. _The Year of Hillary._

“Are you nervous?” It was David, trying to ease her in.

“Oh, just a little.” She smiled at him. She had been trembling from nerves backstage, and had told Bill as much during their phone call. _Just be yourself._ It was the best advice he could give her, cliche as it may be. _I’ve almost forgotten how to do that_ , she had responded. Her admission broke his heart. _Just talk to him like you talk to me. Less cursing, perhaps._

“Ah - how is it, living up there? You’ve never lived in this part of the country - you’re living in Chappaqua?”

They had purchased a home a few months ago - a beautiful old Dutch Colonial farmhouse up in Westchester county. Hillary stayed there alone some nights, laying the groundwork for her campaign with strategists and advisors. It was their first time owning a home since the Hillcrest house in Little Rock, where they had spent the two-year period between Bill’s governorships. The home where Chelsea had learned to walk. Where Hillary would pull up in her own car, after long days at Rose, to find Bill and Chelsea playing together in the backyard. Where Bill would flip pancakes on Sunday mornings, where Diane and Jim and their Arkansas friends would gather around a kitchen table laden with coffee and grits and decks of cards. The idea of having a home of their own again sent a thrill through Bill. Him and his wife, living alone together, in one year - almost down to the week.

After eight years in the White House, and ten years before in the Governor's mansion, he yearned for it.

The privacy it would allow them. The intimacy.

“You’ve got a big house! Everybody’s seen it on TV, every idiot in the area is going to drive by honking now.”

“Oh, was that you?” Hillary fired back, her smartass tendencies peeking out tentatively. The audience laughed. Bill saw her relax, saw a minute shift in her posture as she leaned back in her chair. He watched her rest her chin on her hand, watched that smile of hers in profile, lips pressing together before pulling back into a wide grin. She looked beautiful.

“Now people are saying - ‘It’s not official, she hasn’t declared, Giuliani hasn’t declared’. Am I right about that? Nobody’s declared?” David asked.

“Yeah, you are right about that. But, I _am_ going to run for the Senate, and I am officially going to declare.” The date was approaching - she would declare “officially” next month - but she had long since cast the dice, beginning last February when the office of the First Lady had announced her interest via press release.

But this interview tonight brought her intent into the public eye. The Rubicon was being crossed, and there would be no turning back.

“Does your husband know you’re here?” David changed tack, lifted his eyebrows, leaned towards her.

“Don’t tell him.” She smirked, rubbing her lips together, the way she had a habit of doing.

Bill felt something flare up inside of him.

“You know, I met you and your husband once. A long, long time ago. And you couldn’t have been more charming, and affable, and chatty with me. And your husband seemed a little stand-offish.”

Hillary smiled and reached out to David’s desk, running her fingers along the surface, so flirtatious. She crossed her legs and leaned towards him, resting a palm on her knee.

Bill was suddenly aware of two things at once. One - he was watching with fascination as the narrative flipped; as Hillary was suddenly framed as the charming spouse, and he was the ball and chain. The other was a gnawing feeling in his gut as he watched her. Hillary’s tongue was between her lips again, dragging her fingertips up and down the edge of David’s desk.

Gnawing. It was something like jealousy.

“I don’t… I don’t think that’s it at all.” Hillary wore a cat-like expression on her lovely face. “I think he was just so curious as to why you’d never made a joke about him.”

David had, like all other late-night talk show hosts, made endless jokes about Bill’s infidelity, often at her expense. Bill watched as she flipped the jokes to her benefit, at once acknowledging them and diffusing their power, grasping them in her hands and using them for her own gain.

They laughed together with the audience. Hillary closed her eyes, bent over, her shoulders shaking. She looked so… _free._

And she looked different tonight. Bill studied her on the glowing screen - the way her short hair curled around the shell of her ear. Her tailored black pantsuit with a pretty pink collar framing her face. He was struck by how young she looked, how beautiful. Her face lit up with every laugh.

“Now listen, have you ever spent time with Rudolph Giuliani? Do you like the man? Do you have any regard for him at all? I read that you said, maybe for the Senate, that he wasn’t temperamentally suited.”

“Well - he’s done a lot of... stuff, as mayor. But I think being senator is a different kind of job. You know, as senator, you just can’t go out and arrest a homeless person, for example.”

Bill erupted with laughter. Smartass. That was his Hillary, all right. _That’s my girl._

It was an evening that would play out again and again, as the years marched on, as Hillary would win and serve, and then campaign and win again. And, eventually, lose. Bill would watch her in interviews and speeches, sometimes from the audience, other times from the background, standing proudly next to his wife. At other times he would watch from behind the scenes, viewing the playback as it was fed in on a television backstage. When none of those options were available, he would watch the recorded versions afterwards, his chin on his fist, or his hand on his heart, enamoured and besotted and aching with pride and love for her, his incredible wife.

As the interview wrapped up, David held her hand, leaned in and whispered something in her ear. Bill was surprised by the wave of emotion that hit him again. It wasn’t something _like_ jealousy. It _was_ jealousy. He had seen his wife lean close to other men before, had seen her kiss cheeks and whisper and chat with them. But tonight was made different by the way he was missing her. It was a clawing, clambering, throbbing desire. Eighteen months of longing for her was pent up inside of him, threatening to overflow. Seeing anyone else’s lips near her ear made him crazy.

He wiped his palms on his slacks and looked at the clock, waiting for her.

That evening, when she returned, Bill made love to her for the first time in nearly a year and a half. He held her, possessive and intense, and poured every single lost moment into her body.

As they twined together in their bed, he whispered to her over and over.

_I love you, I love you, I love you._

 

* * *

 

 

The first time they made love was at the beach house in Milford, a month after her introduction in the library.

In the time between, he had fallen in love with her. Hard. There was no easing into it - it was a straight drop off a sheer cliff face. A few days after her introduction, he had caught her on the way to registering for classes, and they spent the afternoon and evening walking and talking all over campus. A few days after that, he brought her chicken soup and orange juice to mend a Spring fever. They spoke every single day from then on. He couldn’t keep himself away from her. _If I start something with her, I won’t be able to stop._

They had slipped in through the kitchen door and stumbled up the stairs to Bill’s bedroom on the second floor. Hillary had tossed her Yale sweater back on before they came inside, shaking sand from her hair and clothes. Bill kept slipping his hands up under her top, kept stopping her every few steps to kiss her.

“We’re never-” a kiss, “going to make it-” another one, “up to your- mmm.”

He grabbed her wrist to stop her progress, wrapped his arms around her body, and pressed her down onto the stairs. He kneeled over her, between her legs, one hand supporting the small of her back. He didn’t think he could make it to his room - he was going to take her right there on the landing. She had been teasing him all night. The squeeze of her legs around his waist in the kitchen, the weight of her straddling him in the sand, her hot breath in his ear whispering then and now, “I love you, I love you.”

He planted one hand next to her head on a stair and kissed her, tangling his tongue with hers, tasting her. He felt her body arch up to his, trying to make contact. _Oh, fuck._ He needed it - he needed to feel her. She grinned against his mouth and snaked a hand down between their bodies, between his legs, and squeezed his cock through his jeans. He clenched his jaw to stifle a moan, pulled himself away, and made some small effort to collect himself. The only fragment of logic keeping him from pulling off her clothes right there on the staircase was the idea of Doug stumbling into the hallway at any moment.

Bill stood, weak-kneed and chest heaving, and pulled her to her feet. He dragged her against his body and kissed her again. He couldn’t get enough of her mouth. They somehow managed to make it to the top of the stairs and down the hall and into his room without disconnecting. He kicked the door shut as they stumbled inside, and she pressed him back towards his bed until he fell onto the mattress, climbing on top of him.

She sat up and pulled her sweater over her head again, tossing it to the side. His hands were immediately on her, squeezing her hips and waist, feeling every inch of soft skin he could touch. He froze for a moment as her hands reached behind her to unclasp her bra. She eased it down her shoulders and over her arms. He stared at her. Stared and stared. He had touched her through her clothes, had cupped her breasts through fabric as he kissed her, curled up on couches and porch swings together. But he was stunned now, looking up at her, her long hair cascading over her shoulders, down her back and between her bare breasts. Bill reached up a hand, gently brushed her hair behind one shoulder, then dragged his fingers down over her collarbone and one pink nipple, palming her breast in his hand. Her eyes slipped closed and she rolled her hips against him, softly exhaling. He had imagined so many times what she might look like in this position, but he had been so wrong.

She was so much more beautiful than he could have ever conceived.

She opened her eyes and reached for his free hand, twined it with hers. She eyed him as she brought his hand up to her mouth and kissed the tips of his fingers, one by one, looking down at him. He turned his palm to cup her cheek and jaw, and dragged his thumb over her swollen mouth, pulled her lower lip down to expose her teeth and tongue. She pressed herself against him and he moaned, feeling her warmth through layers of fabric, and thrust his hips up against her, aching for friction. She tilted her head back and he took advantage, drawing his hand down over her chin and neck, and wrapped his fingers around her throat for a moment, then slid his palm down her chest, between her breasts and over her ribcage, and down her belly, as he would do again and again and again in years to come.

His fingers toyed at the button of her shorts, tugging, playing until finally releasing the clasp. He sat up and dropped one hand from her breast to grasp her bottom, holding his girl in his lap, eye-to-eye. His other hand pressed into the front of her shorts, between the two layers of fabric, and he slid his fingers against her panties, feeling the hard peak and the parting of her lips, the slick wetness soaking his fingers through cotton. He gripped her ass and dragged his fingers against her, felt her tremble in his lap. She dropped her forehead against his shoulder, grinding her hips against his hand, moaning his name over and over.

“Please, Bill,” she whispered against his chest.

“Mmm, please _what_ , baby?”

She was moaning, whimpering in his arms. “Tell me, baby,” he turned his face, pressed his mouth against her hair.

“Please, please,” she murmured, pressing into his hand. “Please, make love to me, please.”

He closed his eyes, let her words wash over him. The effect was like nothing he had ever experienced before.

He slid his hand out of her shorts and slipped it under her chin, lifting with his fingers so she was looking him in the eye. He looked at her, the way he had many times and the way he would look at her for years to come. Her chin upturned, lips parted and sweet, her blue eyes meeting his through soft blonde lashes.

_“You are so beautiful.”_

She opened her mouth, and before she could respond he crushed his lips against hers, pressed her onto her back and pulled her body under his, kissing her like breathing. He felt her hands grasping at his shirt, and he lifted himself enough to cast it over his head, then dropped down to kiss her again, urgently, teeth scraping lips, biting, gasping.

He released her mouth and began a slow crawl down her body, pressing open-mouth kisses down the length of her, tasting her skin. He cast his eyes up to look at her face, watched her bite her lower lip between her teeth, her eyebrows knit, her eyes hooded with pleasure. She arched and writhed with each touch.

He pressed a kiss to the soft underside of her breast, to the peak of her ribcage, her navel, the skin above her panties. He grasped the waist of her shorts and slipped them down over her thighs, her legs, over her feet. He pressed another kiss to the inside of her knee, then her thigh, up, up, dragging his lips up her bare skin. He held her hips in his hands and, looking up at her, pressed his mouth to the front of her panties, tasted her on his lips, tasted her through soft cotton. She was panting now, her mouth wide, struggling against his grip.

“ _Pleasepleaseplease,”_ she groaned over and over. He teased her for a moment, for as long as he could, exhaling a breath over her, pressing the tip of his tongue to the hard peak he felt through wet fabric. She whimpered again, _“Please’’_ , and he obliged, slipped her panties down over her thighs and sat up between her parted legs to look at her before him, so bare and so perfect. She watched as he unbuttoned his jeans, pulled them over his hips with his briefs, and kicked both over the edge of the bed. He watched her eyes move from his, down to his mouth, then down his bare chest and stomach, resting between his legs. She licked her lips. He thought he would combust.

“ _Please.”_

He crawled back over her and settled between her parted thighs, rested his forehead against hers as he pressed inside of her for the first time, her hands clutching him, their breathing jagged, their moans tumbling together. He tried to keep his eyes open, to watch her expression, feeling her for the first time, soft and silk and so warm. “So beautiful, you’re so beautiful,” he said, kissing her between his words. He felt her fingers in his hair, clinging to him. She gasped into his mouth when he slid inside of her fully, as close as he could be to her, hips against hips. Stars exploded behind his eyelids, the collapse of everything that wasn’t the two of them wrapped up together in his bed.

They made love like that until dawn, legs twined together, as close as they ever could be. Between her thighs, then rolling to his back, dragging her on top of him. They lost all track of time, conjuring magic between them, and felt the universe fall away.

And oh, how she bloomed in his arms. How she glowed.

 

* * *

 


	11. Hope

_The nail technician pushed my cuticles back ... turns my hand over, stretches the skin on my palm and says, "I see your daughters and their daughters." That night in a dream, the first girl emerges from a slit in my stomach. The scar heals into a smile. The man I love pulls the stitches out with his fingernails. We leave black sutures curling on the side of the bath._

_I wake as the second girl crawls headfirst up my throat, a flower blossoming out of the hole in my face._

 

* * *

  

_January 13th, 2000_

 

Bill brushed his fingertips over her skin, soft as a whisper. He tapped the xylophone ridge of each rib - one, two, three - ran the pad of his thumb over the parabola of her ribcage under taut flesh. He charted the course of her figure with wandering hands. Her body was a map he was so familiar with; he knew every stretch and curve and valley, every path, every single scar.

He drew his fingers down to his favourite, the pearl thread that spanned her lower abdomen. She exhaled as he pressed his palm across that lifeline, stretched his big hand across her, hip bone to hip bone, measuring his ability to capture her up in his palm.

He held the memories in the broad span of his hand.

The hot sun and rum punch of Bermuda, the white sand and the hours making love in an afternoon haze. Her freckled chest and cheeks, her skin and hair kissed golden by the sun. At dusk they cast open the windows, allowed the hot salt air to blow into their room over bodies wound together in linen sheets. He had curved his body up behind hers and held her throat with one hand, the other cupping her breasts, then down her stomach, between her thighs. She trembled despite the heat. Magic.

The look on her face six weeks later, when she found out that she was pregnant. Finally, finally, after so long trying. They laughed and cried together with relief and joy.

He had never felt more protective of his wife then he did in those months, watching her belly grow. Hillary, of course, had continued her work at the law firm, relishing in the reactions of fellow lawyers and judges at the sight of her swollen belly peeking from under sweaters and jackets. He remembered how she had flown north, seven months pregnant, to make a case before the rating agencies in New York City on behalf of Arkansas Children’s Hospital. _My crazy wife_. Bill joked when she got home that they had only agreed to provide the good bond rating to get her out of their offices before she gave birth on the floor. During her trip, he had oscillated between panic and pride. Her return had been pure relief.

He remembered how frantic he had been at the Governors’ dinner in Washington the following month, how he had called her every few hours.

“They’re just Braxton Hicks, honey,” she had reassured him. He had flown into another panic when she told him she was feeling contractions. Being eight months along in her pregnancy meant that she was not allowed to fly, and so she had stayed behind in Little Rock. “It’s normal, especially in the last few months of pregnancy. No, no, I’m not going into labour - she’s not due for another three weeks! Don’t worry.”

But he did worry. He worried all through that dinner at the White House, he worried in his Washington hotel room, clutching the phone, which Hillary on the receiving end pressed to her belly so he could say goodnight to their child. And then again the next morning, so he could sing to both of them. _Pretty baby, won’t you wake up, it’s a Chelsea morning._ He worried on his way to the airport, he worried on the flight all the way back to Arkansas. Within an hour of arriving home, Hillary’s water had broken.

“I _knew_ she was coming!” He had stated triumphantly. His bragging was very temporary - as he watched his wife grit her teeth with each contraction that hit her, the panic set in again.

“We waited just for you,” she said, retaining her humour through a clenched jaw.

He remembered how she had called to him from the back of the car when she saw a state trooper haul a garbage bag into the trunk, as they prepared to leave for the hospital.

“What in the world is that?”

“Ice! You said we needed to bring a bag of ice!” Bill was wide-eyed and running on pure adrenaline.

Hillary had laughed that big, beautiful laugh of hers. “A _small_ bag, honey,” she had said, her laughter dissolving into a groan as she rode the wave of another contraction.

He was at his wife’s side when they opened her up, and later, when they sutured her back together, charming his way past hospital rules and regulations that normally left fathers in the waiting room.

He remembered the way Hillary had looked up at him as he held Chelsea for the first time, her eyes brimming with tears, her cheeks flushed and pretty. He pressed his nose to his newborn girl’s head, smelled her, kissed her. “Welcome to the world, baby girl.” His own father hadn’t lived to hold him like this.

Hillary, Hillary. For all the gifts she had given him - her presence, her support, her advice and intelligence and guidance, her defenses, her brilliance and companionship - this was the very, very best of them all. He clutched his daughter, three weeks early and so tiny, and gazed from her to his wife and back again. They had made this perfect little person together. He couldn’t believe it.

He looked up at her now to find her smiling down at him, her head perched on pillows, watching. It was a strange thing to love a woman like her - she was almost unreal, even to him. So close and so distant, so human to him but so untouchable to others. She was everything; at once a force of nature, and yet the most tender thing he could imagine. He pressed a kiss to her belly.

“What are you thinking about?”

“You. Always, you.”

He remembered sitting on the floor next to the bathtub in the Governor’s mansion. Hillary, nestled in the bath, held a newborn Chelsea on her thighs, pouring warm water over her from cupped palms. Chelsea cooed in her lap. Bill rested his chin on the edge of the tub, looked down at them, his heart filled to bursting. His perfect little family.

He reached for another memory. This same woman, who held their newborn daughter in gentle hands, was also capable of ambushing Tom McRae back in Arkansas in the gubernatorial race, shouting him down when he accused Bill of refusing to debate him at the Capitol. “ _Come off it, McRae!”_ She had shouted, tearing into his soundbite in front of reporters, ballsy and pissed, fists clenched. “Who was the person who didn’t show up in Springdale? _Give me a break!_ ” Always tossing herself into the breach without a hint of fear.

_At once a force of nature, and yet the most tender thing he could imagine._

People really couldn’t square her. They couldn’t fathom how she could be so many things at once. Bill nearly put his fist through a wall when an article surfaced stating that she wasn’t “maternal”, that called into question her abilities as a mother to Chelsea. They only saw a warped image of her. But they didn’t know her at all.

Hillary would joke to the press much later, “I’m the most famous person you don’t know.”

But he knew her. He knew this woman like the back of his own hand. He knew her better than he knew himself - every inch of her skin, every inflection of her voice, the width of her wrists and the pink of her tongue. The way she pressed her lips together before she smiled, wide and warm. The tilt of her head when she made self-deprecating jokes, the way her cheeks flushed when she got to her third glass of wine, her expressions. How she snorted when he made her laugh too hard. The way she told stories about growing up in Park Ridge, how her eyes went dreamy in remembering. Her wonkyness. Her temper. How her nostrils flared when she was charging up to really give it to him. Her penchant for dirty jokes. Her soft heart, her capacity for empathy. Her capacity for suffering.

How they had tried for another child. How she was lost to them, long before she had a chance. _We might have called her Virginia._ The memory seared him, and he shelved it away quickly.

He walked his fingertips along the scar like a tightrope.

He remembered an afternoon in the White House, when they had invited children in foster care to join them, to tell their stories and to connect the Adoption and Safe Families Act to reality - to the lives of real children, their innocence and vulnerability. A little blonde boy sat on the rug near Hillary’s feet, face cast down, shy. How she had reached to him, gently touched his shoulder. “What’s your name?” He had whispered something just for her to hear. She stroked his back, comforting him. “We’re so happy to have you here.” He wondered for a moment what thoughts were in her mind when she reached out to him. He wondered if she had pictured the children they could no longer have.

He remembered how she had fought for that little boy, and so many others, by finding common ground between the political parties. His stomach twisted at the criticism lobbed at her for her bipartisan efforts.

He knew how the fight for children’s health and education and safety burned in her. It wasn’t political, it wasn’t about this side of the aisle or that. It was what drove her, sustained her, animated her.

He thought with the deepest regret about how her work on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program had been reduced to a sentence at the end of Ted Kennedy’s speech when the bill was signed. That she was of _invaluable help._ And an _advocate._ Bill knew how she was thrust into the background, into the back rooms, to toil away at the work without recognition. Without _adequate_ recognition. After the healthcare fiasco in the early 90’s they had once again been pressured to keep her involvement under the radar. “What good am I to you, really?” She had asked one night, in the darkest pit of self-doubt he had ever seen her. “People hate what we do, if I’m involved in doing it.”

The song and dance they had to go through in May of ‘97, battling with Republicans in Congress - how they had to shut down the first attempt to pass the law to follow budgetary rules. How she did what had to be done to get it passed a few months later - the negotiating, deep in the political underbelly, not glorious but made necessary by years of obstructionism. How she took the heat anyways, slung with accusations of playing on the side of the enemies. As if she were in bed with the Republicans for her own gains. Bill swallowed his bitterness and shelved it, too.

But he also remembered the jubilant look on her face that night in ‘97, after he signed SCHIP into law, even amidst the murmurs that downplayed or outright rejected her role in crafting the policy. She was all smiles, despite being cast from the role of hands-on policymaker into background advocate.

“Six million children got health insurance today,” she said, hands resting in her lap. “It doesn’t matter what history says about me. We got it done.” _Lemons into lemonade._

He scrawled his signature on that thin white scar.

His mind toyed with a thought that had plagued him since 1992 - how she should have been the one signing bills into law. How much more successful their administration may have been with her at the helm. _Looks like we elected the wrong Clinton,_ that old Arkansas refrain sang in his mind. It stung - but not his ego. He knew the truth of it. And he knew all that she had sacrificed to lie here next to him as the _wife_ of the President. 

And so, one year out from the end of his term and at long last, she would finally have her run at office. The Letterman interview that aired mere hours ago had sealed the deal, and sent her into an eleven month battle until election day. “My baptism by fire,” she had joked. “The Republicans haven’t burned me alive yet, though not for lack of trying. I’m not afraid.” Of course she wasn’t.

He pressed another kiss to her stomach, still flushed from their lovemaking. He walked his fingers up her skin, following the mark of his lips and the familiar paths of her body, as they set out together into uncharted territory.

 

* * *

 

She stared down at the ballot.

Her own name there in black and white, for the first time, on a cold November morning. Her heart fluttered with a quiet hope.

She pressed pencil to paper and shaded in the bubble.

For Senator from New York State, Hillary Clinton.

 

* * *

 


	12. Redemption - Part 1

_My mother, the alchemist, you spun gold out of this hard life, conjured beauty from the things left behind. Found healing where it did not live. Discovered the antidote in your own kit. Broke the curse with your own two hands. You passed these instructions down to your daughter who then passed it down to her daughter._

_“I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up. I was served lemons, but I made lemonade.”_

_My mother said "Nothing real can be threatened."_

_True love brought salvation back into me._  
_With every tear came redemption, and my torturers became my remedy._

 

* * *

 

_June, 1973_

 

Hillary cut the engine and unclipped her seatbelt. She gathered a bundle of papers from the passenger seat, slung her purse over her shoulder, and stepped out of the car into a quiet neighbourhood encapsulated in a mid-Monday lull. The streets were empty of cars and pedestrians, typical of a suburban weekday, with adults at work in downtown New Bedford and children in schools impatiently looking forward to the summer break.

Hillary scanned the row of homes up and down the street, referencing the address on the list of census information she carried. It was the seventh stop of the day.

She strolled up the sidewalk, past lawns in various states of upkeep and houses in various states of disrepair, finding the house number on her list a few doors down. The small clapboard rancher was wrapped in a chain link fence, the lawn patchy with dead grass and chickweed. No car stood in the covered driveway, and blinds were drawn shut in the front windows. She opened the gate, a shrill creak piercing the silence, and made her way up the path to the front steps. They, too, creaked under her feet, protesting against her intrusion. She tapped the front door, her bundle of documents clutched to her chest.

Three brisk knocks, one-two-three. More silence.  

The recent census information stated that a school-aged child lived in this house, but cross-referencing the surname had not turned up an enrollment in the local elementary school. Hillary raised up on her toes to peer through the high window in the door, cupped her hands around her face to see into the darkened home. She knocked again, but there was only silence. 

She waited another moment, hesitating. Something kept her from returning to her car. She looked down at the sheet again, found the girl’s name. _Maria, where are you?_  

She stepped down from the front porch and crossed the lawn, walking along the side of the house under the covered carport and into the backyard. A small, covered porch jutted from the back of the house, and through the metal screen she could see someone was seated there.  

“Oh - hello,” she called out, making her way to the door that was propped open to the yard. “I’m sorry, I knocked on the front door, but…” 

Her words drifted off as she peeked her head through the doorway. A young girl looked up at her with wide brown eyes, startled.

“H-hello there,” she started again, this time in a gentle voice. “I’m sorry if I scared you. I’m looking for a girl named Maria. Are you Maria?”

The girl nodded. Under the blanket covering her lap, Hillary could see that she was seated in a wheelchair. 

“Is your mom or dad home, Maria?”

The girl shook her head.

“They’re at work. Grandma’s not here either,” she answered cautiously. Hillary furrowed her brows for a moment as she realized that the girl had been left alone - then, immediately, calculated the impact her expression could have on the girl and set her face in a calm mask.

“Is it okay if I come and talk to you for a few minutes?” Hillary asked. The girl nodded.

“Is your grandma at work, too?”

“No, she’s at her house... maybe. She comes in the morning to help me with breakfast. Then she brings me outside. She comes back to talk to me sometimes. It depends on how grandpa is doing at their house. And then later she’ll come and bring me back inside for dinner.” The girl looked down at her hands. She had loops of yarn wrapped around her fingers, playing Cats in the Cradle, hands together and then apart, over and over.

Hillary stepped onto the porch and knelt in front of her, bringing her to eye level. She coated her face in a warm smile, but her stomach churned.

“Well, I suppose should introduce myself. My name is Hillary. It’s very nice to meet you, Maria,” she said, trying to meet her gaze. “I didn’t expect that I would be so lucky! I thought maybe you would be in school today.”

“I don’t go to school.” Threads looping, twisting on the girl’s fingers.

“Why don’t you go to school?”

“Because I can’t walk.”

Hillary looked at the girl, her brown eyes downcast, looping the soft yarn over and over again.

She blinked and saw her mother.

Her mother, alone on a train bound for California, clutching her little sister’s hand, cast out of her parents home; an unwanted and unloved child. She thought of her mother locked up in her bedroom after her grandmother had discovered her trick-or-treating with neighbourhood children, imprisoned for months as a result of the transgression. She thought of her mother experiencing the meaning of “family” for the first time as a teenager, and only then as a caretaker for another family’s children. She thought of her mother never knowing love from her own mother. She thought of millions of children uncounted, unloved, unsupported. Alone and without a champion.

She talked to the girl, asked her about herself, and slowly but surely managed to elicit a smile. Eventually, she lifted her big brown eyes to meet Hillary’s.

“Maria, I’ll make sure you get to go to school like everyone else. Would you like that?” The girl nodded. “It’s time for me to go now, but it was very nice to meet you today. Thank you for talking with me.”

She stood, maintaining an encouraging smile, and patted the girl's shoulder gently before turning away. She marked the sheet as she walked back around to the front of the house. _Maria, age 10, wheelchair-bound. Not enrolled in school by family._ The seventh child of the day. Her heart ached.

She made it to the car before the facade fell. She collapsed into the seat, bent in half at the waist and pressed her forehead to the steering wheel, and wept.

She waited, parked in front of the house, until the girl’s grandmother returned.

 

* * *

 

 

Hillary raised her glass along with the crowd in a toast.

“And here is the candidate who won the most votes in the presidential election!”

Everyone cheered, shouts of “Here, here!” rang out.

The Florida recount had been halted in December, and Bush Junior had thusly been named the president-elect by the Supreme Court’s decision, losing the popular vote by 500,000 but ultimately winning the electoral college.

“To Vice President Al Gore!” Everyone tapped glasses with those around them, coating revelers in a haze of tinkling glasses and murmurs, celebrating where they could despite the weather and the loss.

The rain pattered the awning that had been set up on the South Lawn for the gathering. Hillary mingled with advisors and aides, and received congratulations of her own as people passed by, shaking her hand, offering hugs and well wishes. Bill found her in the crowd, the way he always did, and clinked his glass against hers.

“And here’s to the newest Senator from New York,” he said, bumping his forehead against hers gently. “ _Senator_ Clinton.”

Three days ago, she had been sworn in on the floor of the Senate by the Vice President. She had marched onto the floor with half a dozen others, all men, standing out against all their black in a sky blue suit.

She had always harboured a fondness for the pomp of ceremony - from the sight of a university procession, with faculty and celebrants, honorary guests and alumni, all festooned in robes and regalia, to memories of ceremonies as a young Girl Scout, her own sash heavy with dozens of pins and badges. It harkened back to her childhood, a youth full of local parades and processions, the academic and the extracurricular. Entering the Senate Floor with the group of incoming Senators, her heart soared as she marched to the rhyme of history, the connecting thread, the heartbeat of the past echoing into the present. She was living and making history - as a new Senator among others, and as the first woman Senator from New York State. As the _first_ First Lady to be elected to public office.

She raised her right hand as Al recited the Oath of Office, her own Bible clutched in her left.

“Do you solemnly swear that you will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that you will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that you take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that you will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which you are about to enter, so help you God?”

“I do.”

The Vice President kissed her cheek and whispered his congratulations.

She gazed up from where she stood, and saw Bill looking down at her from the gallery above, and next to him Chelsea and Dorothy. Three wide, proud smiles.

Dorothy. Her mother.

Her heart squeezed in her chest, her mind flicking through each memory that led up to this moment. The thread of history, past to present. The heartbeat.

It took five years for Hugh to convince Dorothy to marry him, and five more before she gave birth to her firstborn, a beautiful baby girl, Hillary Diane. _Like mother, like daughter._ She had held her in her arms, and vowed to imbue in her the fight to _make it. No matter what._

Blocking the back door when little Hillary had tried to escape the rude neighbourhood boys instead of confronting them. “Get back out there and give it right back to them!” Her mother said, nudging her back into the yard. And oh, did she ever, with a clenched fist right into the bully’s nose.

Her call to her mother in the first months at Wellesley, crying into the plastic mouthpiece of the telephone.

“I can’t do this. I’m not smart enough to be here.”

“Hillary, you are not a quitter.”

“I can’t even learn French,” she had sobbed. Her mom on the other end, though concerned for her daughter, had to pull the phone away from her mouth to conceal a laugh.

“You know what I’ve always said to you, Hillary. We don’t have cowards in this house. You will stay at that school, and you will work hard like you always have, and you will be brilliant. I believe in you. I love you.”

Memories of that little house in Arkansas, the first one in Fayetteville. Her mother up on a ladder with a roller in her hand, hair tied up in a scarf, painting the walls the day before Hillary’s wedding. They picked out the honey yellow together, sweet as sunshine. Those lemonade walls in that little house.

Her mother’s tears on her behalf after Bill’s confession.

“You don’t have to stay. I will support you if you do, but you don’t have to,” Dorothy had said. “But this is up to you. You cannot change what he did. You own yourself. Nobody can take control of your mind, or your heart. You always have the power to choose.”

Her mother, spinning magic in her own two hands, transforming her tragedy into triumph in the truest sense, exercising her power to choose. A woman who had never been held with comforting hands, who had been forced to raise herself and her sister in the cruelest circumstances, in turn loving her own firstborn, her daughter, endlessly and unconditionally. Her mother, her champion, her inspiration. It was a history that struck like a match, igniting a fire deep within her. “I could never go back and help my mother,” Hillary would say much later, in another speech, in another campaign. “That little girl alone on the train. But I will do everything in my power to make sure that no child experiences what she did.”

Dorothy broke the curse in her own family, and redirected the course of her own destiny. What should have been a path towards darkness turning into the brightest light, blinding and beautiful. Her daughter, angel in blue silk and pearls, making history on the Senate Floor.

After the swearing in, during the press photo ops, Hillary posed with her family, left hand on a Bible held by her husband, right hand raised. Snaps and pops of flashbulbs engulfed them, but it didn't harken back to that Arkansas summer of 1987 at the Excelsior hotel. There were no tears to be found on her cheeks, this time.

Against all the odds, all the way back to her mother, abandoned on a train headed to California, and spanning thousands and thousands of choices in between that moment and this one, _this night was hers._

 

* * *

 

She wandered between rooms. The transition had long since begun - their belongings packed away, ready to be shipped to Chappaqua at noon the next day. The rooms looked different already, more sparse in some places, space made in preparation for the incoming administration. The White House is a home like a vessel, in turns made ready for another family to be poured inside, to flow and mould themselves into the walls and the responsibilities that go along with them. To shape and be shaped as they fit themselves inside.

The halls already felt a world away, but she couldn’t help but to remember.

Hillary made her way through the West Sitting Hall, into the private dining room. The walls, yellow as lemonade and sunshine just like Arkansas, the silk wall hangings she had picked out in their first months. She brushed her fingertips over the dining table, walking the length. She paused near the fireplace, scanning the room, absorbing the last moments that this place would be her home. She moved into the adjoining kitchen and leaned against the doorframe, remembered evening pancakes and kisses on countertops and falling in love all over again. _You are the love of my life. You are the love of my life._

She walked across the hall, through the living room, and into the Yellow Oval Room. She marvelled at the intricate carpets, the heavy chandelier illuminating the space, the history close enough to reach out and touch. She made her way to the windows overlooking the Truman Balcony, the views across the South Lawn to the Washington Monument. The view hadn’t lost its impact in the eight years she had been honoured to behold it. It was grand. It still left her speechless.

Bill entered the room unnoticed, crept up behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist. Always seeking her out.

“Hi, love.”

“Hi, honey.”

He pressed a kiss to her temple, and she turned her head, resting her forehead against his jaw. They looked out the window over the view together, remembered rare, quiet breakfasts on the balcony, the debates over coffee and newspapers. They stood quietly together, but she could feel his thoughts working away in his head, could sense his active mind.

“I’m sorry,” he said into her hair.

She looked up at him.

“What? What’s wrong?”

He kissed her forehead, his worrier.

“Why are you sorry?”

He sighed a deep sigh, a sigh like a burden carried for years. A sigh holding all of the pain and guilt a person could possibly carry.

“For everything. For everything I’ve put you through these last eight years - _hell_ , these last thirty. For every single day you were anything but full of all of the joy you deserved. For everything I did to you. For all of the hurt I inflicted on you. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry.” His eyes were brimming with tears now. She looked up at him, searching his eyes with hers. He looked away, out the window, pressing his mouth into a thin line.

It wasn’t his first apology. Not by a long shot. And she knew, despite their reconciliation, that he was afraid, as he always had been, that she would yet leave him.

Forgiveness had not come in a single event. It had peeked through spring soils, unfurling in her chest, blossoming outward month by month. It had crept up on her, developed over time as they talked and remembered and planned. As they fell into each other again, as they touched each other again, made love again, trusted again. It wasn’t a single, grand event. It was human. It had taken time. But it was a place they had crawled towards together, through pain like barbed wire, through judgement and fear and anguish. They arrived here, together, at this place in the halls of history. At the end of an era, and on the cusp of a new journey together. Nothing was certain but the two of them. _Nothing real can be threatened._

“Bill, honey, look at me.” It was her turn to cup his face in her hands, to catch his tears in her palms, to brush them away with her thumbs. He looked down at her. “You are forgiven.” His breath hitched. “And you are accepted.” She brushed her hands over his cheeks, over and over again. “And I want to be with you." 

She looked up at her husband and saw all of the ways a heart could break and bleed and heal again.

“I choose this life. I choose it freely. There is so much work to do, and we will do it better together. We are stronger together.”

He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her body to his, held her so tight. She felt him exhale a wavering breath. “I love you.”

He kissed the top of her head, the way he always did. The way he always would.

 

> _“The world gives you so much pain_  
>  _and here you are_  
>  _making gold out of it.”_  
>  _―_ **Rupi Kaur**  

 

* * *

 


	13. Redemption - Part 2

_So we're gonna heal. We're gonna start again. You've brought the orchestra, synchronized swimmers._

_You're the magician. Pull me back together again, the way you cut me in half. Make the woman in doubt disappear. Pull the sorrow from between my legs like silk. Knot after knot after knot._

_The audience applauds ... but we can't hear them._

 

* * *

 

_January 21st, 2001_

 

“Welcome home, honey.”

They walked over the threshold together, him after her, flicking on the lights as they entered. Hardwood floors the colour of honey illuminated in the soft glow, crisp white wainscotting and those ubiquitous yellow walls ( _Hillary Yellow_ , he would sometimes joke), thick rugs underfoot and still some unpacked boxes. She dropped her keys on a table by the door, and relished for a moment the simple fact of having keys to a home of her own. Of unlocking a door for herself. Such small things.

They had spent much of the previous day attending events in Washington, and Hillary would be returning there the next morning to her basement space in the Senate office building. There would be nights to come to parse again through next steps, to make more plans, to debate and discuss. But tonight was not a night for that.

She kicked off her shoes, shed her coat and scarf, and turned to watch him do the same. Bill’s heavy wool coat gave way to a soft, grey sweater. She wanted to press herself against it, to feel it against her bare skin. She had thought about it throughout dinner, throughout their trip from the airport to the restaurant, and from the restaurant to home, nestled together in the back seat. But she had waited.

“I have something for you,” she said. His eyes met hers, registering her cheeky grin.

She reached out to him and he took her hand, and she led him down the hallway through to the living room, past walls already hung with family photos. So many sweet memories. She dropped his hand as they entered, allowing him to pass her, and she gestured to the fireplace across the room. His gaze followed to where she indicated, and he laughed quietly as his eyes settled on the target, crossing the room to pluck a heavy glass bottle and tumbler off of the mantel. She tilted her head to the side as he swirled the amber bottle in his hand, watching him.

“Do you remember?”

“Of course I remember.”

Beginnings and ends, the past and the present. Always the same and always so different. Eight years ago to the day, eleven inaugural balls, and the sweetest welcome to their new home - their new bedroom, in particular. Tonight was an inauguration in reverse, now unburdened from the incredible responsibilities of the office, spending the night together in another new home. Always the same. Always so different.

Bill tossed the tumbler in the air. It flipped once before he caught it in his hand and placed it down on the mantel. He uncapped the bottle of scotch and generously filled the glass. She smirked at him - that cheeky grin - as he stepped towards her and lifted the glass up to her lips. She felt a familiar ache, a need, her eyes holding contact with his as he gazed down at her. She drank from the offered glass, the liquid like fire in her throat and settling in her belly, already smouldering but even hotter now. He watched her swallow, watched the movements of her throat, ran his tongue over his lower lip as he did. A gesture that could bring her to her knees. He placed his own lips on the glass where hers had been, drinking deeply. She eyed the liquor left on his lips as he swallowed. She wanted to taste it on his mouth.

He set the glass down next to him and curved an arm around her waist, splayed his hand against the small of her back and pulled her close. He reached for her other hand, twined his fingers with hers.

“Shall we dance?” He asked. “An un-inaugural dance?”

Hillary laughed, folding herself into his arms. They swayed together, Bill’s hand sweeping from the small of her back up the path of her spine, then back again, feeling the curve of her body that he knew so well. She closed her eyes, fingers brushing the soft collar of his sweater.

Bill leaned in to sing Sinatra in her ear, “ _It had to be you, it had to be you.”_ Always the same. Always so different. There were no flourishes tonight, no grand dips or twirls; content to simply touch and hold and be close. He hummed softly into her ear, leaving a trail of goosebumps down her neck and shoulders.

She brought their twined hands together to her lips, kissing the back of his hand. A hand she knew better than her own. The smooth skin, the shape, narrow and deft and elegant, the length and taper of his fingers. She felt the heat in her belly spread, smouldering still, thinking of those hands on her. Thinking of his fingers up in her hair, on her throat. The time she sat on his lap and he watched her face as he slowly, excruciatingly slowly, walked his fingers up her thigh under her skirt. So slowly, pressing the tips of his fingers against her panties, then under, skin on skin, fingertips unwinding her, and her voice over and over asking, _Pleasepleaseplease_. The heat in his eyes as he had held and beheld her, and watched how he could make her tremble.

He opened her up with those hands, opened her up like he always had, pulling down the walls and the defenses and reaching in to free her.

She ran the pad of her thumb over the ridge of his knuckles, and pressed a soft kiss to each fingertip, now her turn to study him. His blue eyes were hooded, watching her mouth against his skin. She could feel the heat of his gaze on every inch of her body. She felt his hand on her back clutch her as she parted her lips and grazed his skin with her teeth, biting down gently. He exhaled a moan, so soft, sighing her name. _Hillary._

His movement was sudden, his hand at once releasing her hand and winding itself into her hair, his arm pulling her to his body. He crushed his mouth against hers, lips still parted, tasting her tongue and the heat and spice of the liquor. He moaned into the kiss, sending a hum through her body. She could feel him against her, could feel him hard against her stomach, could feel the urgency in his kiss. She pressed her palms flat against his chest, feeling the the solid expanse of his broad shoulders under the soft of his sweater.

He stepped back, fell onto the couch and pulled her with him into his lap, one leg on either side of his, straddling him. Her skirt bunched up around her narrow waist, exposing bare thighs. His hands were on her skin immediately, pushing her skirt up higher still, then winding around to grasp her bottom, her mouth on his, pulling his lower lip between her teeth. Her body froze as he grasped one thigh, large hand splayed and gripping her, and pushed his hand up, up, his thumb dragging along her inner thigh. Up further, up under the folds of her skirt. The pad of his thumb pressed against the front of her panties, and she dropped her head to his shoulder, gasping. He pressed again, and again, and she could feel how incredibly wet she was, could feel the slip of his finger against her. The ache and throb consumed her, her breathing laboured against his neck as he touched her.

_“Please.”_

The past and the present. The first time, and others after it, his fingers teasing her, making her plead, making her beg him for it. And he was so willing to give what she wanted. She felt his chest heave under her hands, could see the creeping flush on his neck, the heat in his body and touch. She felt him slip his fingers under the silk and against her skin. “ _Oh, God.”_

She rolled her hips against his fingertips, pushing back, fighting for more pressure, more touch, more of everything. Her hands scrabbled at his chest, clutching his sweater, trying to find purchase. Her moans caught in her throat when she felt him press his fingers inside of her. “ _Oh, God, Bill.”_ A feeling like magic, like being completely undone, her legs shaking. Pleasure sharp as a knife, pleasure coursing through her, every nerve in her body sparking.   _Knot after knot after knot._

He held his mouth against her ear, his breath hot on her skin, whispering to her, “You feel so good, honey. You feel so fucking good.” She could feel the waves of pleasure coursing through her, consuming her, building within her, _sofuckinggood_. She nearly wept when she felt his movements slow.

He slid his hand from between her thighs, pulled her close, his mouth on her ear again.

“Let’s go to bed, baby,” his voice was raw with desire. It sent a shiver through her.

They stumbled down the hall together, Bill clutching her hand, pulling her back to push her up against the wall. She was panting now, the ache unbearable. “Honey, I’m not going to make it.” He had slid his hands under her thighs, pinning her up against the wainscotting, wedged between her legs. She tipped her head back against the wall, and he pressed his open mouth to her neck, to the hollow space at the base of her throat. She could feel it emanating from him, the pure urgency, confirmed when he lifted his hands to her collar and tore open her blouse from neck to waist. His mouth dropped to her chest, teeth nipping her skin, lips and tongue on her breast, whispering against her skin. “ _I love you, I want you. I want to have you.”_

And it was like their first time, again, as they stumbled up the stairs, stopping again and again every few steps to press against each other. His pants, her skirt, tossed over the banister. Her blouse, discarded on one step, then his sweater pulled over his head and tossed to the side. She brought her mouth to the newly bare skin and dragged her tongue along his collarbone, eliciting a deep growl, like music. She drew her fingers down his bare chest, nails scraping, and hooked them at the waistband of his briefs, then down over his hard cock through the fabric. Another groan, a burning gaze, desire that cut right through her.

She pulled her hand back.

“Let’s go to bed, baby,” she repeated his own words back to him, easing her bra over her shoulders, then turning and racing up the last few steps away from him before discarding it. She called to him from down the hall, “Come get me, honey, come make love to me,” and he tore after her, chasing her into their bedroom. One arm around her waist, he lifted her enough to toss her onto the mattress. She laughed, head back, pillowed in down and the softest cotton. His hands were on her again, lifting her hips, deftly dragging her panties down over her thighs.

Her laughter turned to a gasp, a sobbing moan, as he pressed his mouth between her thighs, tasting her, another moan of his own sending a hum through her that left her squirming. Her fingers clutched at the blankets, her body arching, chest heaving. “ _Oh God, oh God,”_ raw voice edged in heat and desire. “ _Please._ ” Her hands in his hair now, grasping for him, thighs trembling. “ _Please._ ” His tongue on her skin, his lips, hands cradling hips. “ _Please, baby,_ ” she said again, pretty red mouth swollen, pleading. “ _Please, I want to feel you inside of me._ ”

He relented, as he would always relent for her, kneeling to rid himself his briefs and then falling between her parted thighs. She twined her fingers in his hair, pulling his mouth to hers, swiping his wet lips with her tongue, skin and salt and sex. They whispered into each other’s mouths as he pressed himself inside of her, _You feel so good_ , hips to hips, whole and complete and perfect. _I love you, I love you._ His lips everywhere, her throat and shoulders, her breasts, pale skin flushed and sweet. It was them conjuring that magic, as they always would.

It was a summation of their life together. It was every memory, every step they had taken. The Yale Law Library. The Milford beach house. The first little home in Arkansas. It was Hillary’s mother up on a step ladder, painting the walls yellow. It was their wedding in the living room. It was creating a child together. It was the night of the first inauguration, coming home to a new place, wrapping around each other. It was the pride they had for what they had achieved together. The stunning resilience. The curse that was broken.

(It was that old question, and the answer still the same: _What does a woman in your position dream about - the president’s wife?_ Dreams colourful and beautiful, vivid. Human. Dreams that made her blush, remembering.)

It was love, love, love, in endless, cascading waves.

It was sighing and gasping, and then later, pure silence but for her husband’s heartbeat and her own, and their soft breaths. It was hush and calm in the gentle quiet of the night.

It was all that mattered, in the end. As she would write, soon, pen to paper:

“I have loved and been loved; all the rest is background music.” 

 

> _she asked_  
>  _'you are in love_  
>  _what does love look like’_  
>  _to which i replied_  
>  _‘like everything i’ve ever lost_  
>  _come back to me’_  
>  **_―_ Nayyirah Waheed**

 

* * *

 


	14. Epilogue

 

 _You will come away bruised_  
_but this will give you poetry._

 

* * *

 

_February 5th, 2017_

 

Light like gemstones bouncing off golden walls and white ceiling. The soft of a blanket over wood floors under backs in a Sunday morning haze. The silliness of lying on the floor of the hallway, girlish giggles, two blonde heads touching.

“Look grandma, purple! Pink!” Charlotte’s little voice, her finger pointing at the shifting refractions.  

“Oh, yes! It’s so pretty, isn’t it? And look - green and blue, too!” Sunbeams peeking through the windows shimmered through the chandelier’s crystals, coating the walls in colours shifting and dancing. Hillary reached out and grasped her granddaughters’ little hand, pressed a kiss to the palm. “You know, your mom and I used to do this when she was a little girl.”

Charlotte paused for a moment, deep in thought. Hillary turned her head to watch her expression, that young brain sparking. She watched her bright little mind absorb all of the beauty around them; all of the small things that the world often moved too quickly to see. That _she_ had been moving too quickly to see, bounding from country to country, from speech to speech, campaign to campaign.

“That was a l-o-o-o-o-ng time ago, grandma,” Charlotte finally responded, full of conviction.

Hillary laughed.

“You’re right, sweetheart. It was a long time ago.”

Honest laughter had taken time to come back to her. Friends and family had come together, as they always did, to wrap her in love and support. There were tears, worse in the nights, at times deep and gut-wrenching. Fear for her country. Failure and guilt in waves, a feeling like suffocating. And yet, there was warmth to be found, even in the darkest moments. Grandbabies to kiss, long walks in crisp woods and hot tea after, hugs from her daughter, thoughtful gifts from friends, thousands of letters from supporters. In time the conversations with her husband late into the night shifted in tone; the darkness edged out by all of the light. On a late November night, curled up together on the sofa, Bill had whispered into her ear, “Fuck that orange motherfucker.”

And Hillary, finally, had laughed.

Quiet Sunday mornings had become a ritual, waking early to stroll the neighbourhood with Bill and the dogs, and then home to coffee, and his pancakes. Some weekends the kids would join them, sticky toddler fingers in maple syrup, Aidan in Hillary’s lap and Charlotte next to Bill so Chelsea and Marc could eat. Kisses on little noses, colouring books on the table. It was home, and warmth, and peace.

But clouds were gathering, and she could sense the darkness. A shift in the country. She had tried to warn them of what was coming.  _This is not who we are_. 

 _"Why, if you're dissatisfied, do you stay in a place?"_ _Well, if you didn't care a lot about it you wouldn't stay._

She turned her head to watch Charlotte, who in turn watched the dancing light and shadows around them. Innocent and untouched by everything that was happening, protected from the dark clouds, from all the fear. She would blossom into childhood in a dark time. Her life would be shaped by it, in some way. Hillary felt a tear slip from the corner of her eye, felt it dampen the fabric under her head as she watched her granddaughter giggle and point, soft curls crushed against the blanket.

But Hillary would fight for her. She would go to the ends of the Earth, scrapping the whole way if she had to.

_There's only the trying, again and again and again; to win again what we've lost before._

And she could feel something bubbling under the surface. That old rage. The white blood cells of democracy rejecting the virus of hate. The fever setting in, rejecting, resisting the darkness. ( _It is often before the fever breaks,_ she had said once, _when one feels that resurrection of hope in the midst of despair._ A speech now twenty years old. So goes that timeless echo from the past into the present).She felt the heat of the fever in waves as she watched footage from the Women’s Marches, the protests at airports, the cries of the writhing, aching, pissed off people of this country. This great country.

_One of the most tragic things that happened yesterday, a beautiful day, was that I was talking to a woman who said that she wouldn't want to be me for anything in the world. She wouldn't want to live today and look ahead to what it is she sees because she's afraid._

Chelsea padded down the hallway in her socks.

“Am I allowed to join this party?” She asked, beaming down at her mother and her daughter.

“Mama!” Charlotte called out to her. “Mama, come look at the colours with me and grandma!”

Chelsea nestled onto the blanket next to Hillary.

“How many hours do you think we spent doing this in Arkansas?” Chelsea asked, laughing. “Nothing changes much in this family.”

Hillary smiled. For the moment, she enjoyed these slow, sweet moments. The poetry to be found in each corner of her life, tucked away in the secret places, so often overlooked in the rush. Her husband reaching out to hold her hand, to stroke her hair, his soft kisses and warmth. Pulling her up, the way she had done for him so many times, and bringing her back into the light. Her family, cuddled up in living rooms or gathered around kitchen tables, filled with laughter and kindness.

Where there was fear, there was, too, a great hope.  A hope greater, stronger, and brighter than anything mustered by fear or darkness.

Flanked by her girls, daughter and granddaughter, she felt herself filled with that familiar drive - to lead, to fight on, to protect them fiercely. Soon, the fever would break, and she would be ready to fight. It was all she could do, and it was all she was called to do. Do all the good you can, for all the people you can, for as long as ever you can. 

She reached out and squeezed each of their hands in hers - Chelsea’s, so much like her own, and Charlotte’s tiny one. The light beamed upon them, that beatific morning sunshine, and the sound of children's laughter echoed in the halls. Nothing could touch this. Nothing could take this away; this beauty, this poetry. All of this love. 

_Fear is always with us, but we don’t have time for it._

_Not now._

 

> _Always aim high, work hard, and care deeply about what you believe in. And, when you stumble, keep faith._  
>  _And, when you're knocked down, get right back up and never listen to anyone who says you can't or shouldn't go on._    
>  ― **Hillary Rodham Clinton**

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the endlessly kind comments and encouragement through each chapter of this story. While it feels bittersweet to see this end, I'm looking forward to what is coming next. 
> 
> As Hillary would say - onward! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Credit to Beyonce, of course, for providing some wonderfully inspirational lyrics, and to Warsan Shire for her beautiful poetry.


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